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Xovelfs International Series 


The Penance 
of Portia James 



BY 

TASM A 


thor of “Uncle Piper of Piper’s Hill,” “In Her Earliest Youth,” 

Etc. 




NEW YORK 

JOHN W. LOVELL COMPANY 

150 Worth Street, corner Mission Place 

Every work in this series is published by arrangement with the author 


Issued Weekly. Annual Subscription, $30.00. October 20, 1891. 
Entered at New York Post Office as second-class matter. 


LOVELLS 

INTERNATIONAL SERIEI 

OP 

MODERN NOVELS. 


The new works published in this excellent Series, Semi-Weekly, are alwa] 
the first issued in this country. 


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me Stuart 

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A Woman’s Heart. Mrs. 


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A Family Without a Name. 



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j 


THE PENANCE 
OF PORTIA JAMES 


BY 


T ASM A 


AUTHOR OF 

UNCLE PIPER OF PIPER'S HILL” “IN HER EARLIEST 
YOUTH” &c. 


i/ 1 1 






*» 



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JOHN W. LOVELL COMPANY 

150 WORTH ST., COR. MISSION PLACE 










X) 



Copyright, i8gi, 

BY 

UNITED STATES BOOK COMPANY. 


All Rights Reserved. 


DEDICATED TO 


JEDmunD Kates 

IN GRATEFUL RECOGNITION OF MUCH KINDNESS. 











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» > 























































































THE 


PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 


CHAPTER I. 

Portia James had been as good as her word, and, 
notwithstanding the fact that she had danced the 
evening before — Portia loved dancing — until the grey 
dawn was actually creeping into the gas-lit rooms, 
she w'as standing only five hours later, that is to say 
at eight o'clock the same morning, on the steps of 
Burlington House, waiting with a few other enthu- 
siasts until the doors should be opened. To face the 
unsparing morning light after having made what is 
suggestively called a night of it, is not an experiment 
that can be entered upon becomingly after the fresh- 
ness of youth is past. Portia, however, was still of 
an age to stand this test — and, what is more, to come 
out of it triumphantly. It was her first season in 
London. She had abundant health ; pleasure and 
admiration seemed to act upon her as stimulants, 
and though she had never slept so little or lived (in 


6 THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 

the sense that living may be measured by keenness 
of sensation) so much as hitherto, she had never 
looked fresher, younger, rosier, or more generally 
blooming, than upon this particular June morning, 
as she stood waiting with the thick catalogue in her 
hand, a confident Peri, outside the gates of the par- 
ticular Paradise she had flown from her bed at that 
early hour to enter. 

Youth and the morning were ever well mated. Did 
not the Greeks, those wonderful pantheists, recognise 
this truth when they invoked the ever-young Aurora 
to coax their world into waking life with the aid of 
her rosy finger-tips ? A certain young artist, who 
was hardly as yet out of the rapin stage, and who had 
seen Portia a few evenings before in the glory of full 
decollete with rounded bust and arms emerging from 
old-rose satin — or something equally vague and 
charming as regarded its hue — and who had thought 
on that occasion of Byron's lines upon the score of 
beauty, 

“ Mellowed to that tender light, 

Which Heaven to gaudy day denies,* * 

found himself inclined at the present moment to alter 
his opinion. He had reached the Academy a little 
before Portia, and had watched her unobserved as she 
mounted the steps. His eye, accustomed to transfer 
to an imaginary canvas all that it encountered, took 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 7 

in every detail of her appearance at a glance. The 
misty background of the London atmosphere, which 
looked as though at least two of the well-known 
Egyptian plagues, to wit, the reign of darkness and 
the rain of blood, were struggling for supremacy over 
it — the simple explanation thereof being that the sun s 
rays were striving to penetrate a threatening fog — 
gave the indefiniteness of outline that stamps an im- 
pressionest picture to her silhouette , as she walked. 
Nevertheless, Harry Tolhurst, with the divination 
that comes of artistic training, was aware, as I have 
said, of all the details of it. Portia had a figure that 
might have inspired a Swinburnian rhapsody, and 
Harry did full justice to this in his mind as she 
walked up the steps in a tailor-made Scotch tweed 
that sat closely, but not tightly, round her ex- 
quisite form. Her bright head was covered with one 
of those patulous splashes of black lace that serve as 
a substratum for a garland of flowers. Perhaps it 
was not quite in keeping with the tailor-made dress, 
but it harmonised wonderfully well with the face that 
it framed ; and this mention of her face brings me to 
the most difficult part of my description, for the face is 
supposed by most to be the crucial test or criterion 
by which beauty is to be gauged. Portia, it must be 
owned at once, did not possess what might be called, 
objectively speaking, a beautiful face. It was a face 
that did not focus well, as the photographers say, 


8 THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 

and those of her acquaintances who had only seen 
her photograph were agreeably surprised when they 
encountered the original. In the photographs the 
face was deprived of the very qualities that consti- 
tuted its principal charm — namely, softness of colour- 
ing and mobility of expression. What is the loveliest 
landscape under a grey sky compared with the same 
landscape when the clouds and the sunlight sweep 
across it, revealing a thousand unsuspected charms ? 
Portia in her photographs was the landscape on a sun- 
less day. Portia in her own person was the land- 
scape on a day of April showers, of summer storms, 
of autumn moons, of all that makes inanimate nature 
live and vibrate with human passion. To certain 
people, therefore — to those who could awake corre- 
sponding phases in her — she was subjectively beauti- 
ful ; and for the fact that her eyes — of the warm hazel 
that accompanies chestnut hair — were too wide apart ; 
that her nose was too short, or her mouth too large, 
they cared not one whit. Her eyes, as some of them 
had discovered to their cost, could “ thoroughly 
undo” them betimes — and what could the most 
beautiful eyes of the most beautiful houri in an East- 
ern Paradise do more? — and this without malice pre- 
pense on her part, for if Portia was a coquette she was 
not a deliberate one. It was for this reason that her 
conquests were so serious and so lasting. Men took 
her seriously in spite of themselves, and none, I fear 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 9 

took her more seriously than Harry Tolhurst. In- 
deed, it would have been at variance with his nature 
to take her in any other way, for though his vocation 
was that of an artist, and although he loved his 
vocation, his actual bias was towards the austerity 
and self-renunciation of a therapeutist, in the reli- 
gious application of the term. Even as regarded his 
art, he aimed at giving it a transcendental significance, 
and nothing irritated him more than the French 
point of view respecting art and literature, which 
disdains to take account of the subject that inspires, 
and makes cleverness of execution on the one hand, 
and perfection of literary form on the other, its sole 
criterion of praise or blame. 

Yet this very young man — the very, in this in- 
stance, does not point to extreme youth, for Harry 
was approaching the thirties — was led to take an 
interest in Miss James, in the first instance, for the 
entirely carnal reason that she had so charming a 
figure. It was as he told himself, a legitimate and 
artistic interest ; for the pictures that he painted, and, 
far beyond these, those he dreamed of painting, 
necessitated the frequent study of the feminine out- 
line. He had first been struck by Portia’s figure as 
she rode past him in the park, the great clump of 
chestnut hair that could not be thrust under her hat 
lending a certain Lady-Godiva-like association of 
ideas to the picture ; and he kept the vision of it in 


IO 


THE PENANCE OF PORT! A JAMES . 


his mind until he was introduced to her by chance at 
a Joachim concert, at which she was present with 
some special friends of his, seated, as it happened, 
in his close neighbourhood. He never forgot the 
harmonies he had heard on that occasion. For ever 
after they seemed to blend themselves with the 
vision of Portia in her summer dress, as she listened 
to the heart-searching music with her eyes down, so 
completely under the spell that, when she raised 
them at the close, there were unconscious tears 
quivering on the lashes. He had thought then that 
such a tribute far exceeded the clamorous applause that 
filled the hall, and had envied the Master his power. 
But Portia’s eyes were just as speaking without the 
tear-drops, and, before the concert was over, Harry's 
ambition to change places with Herr Joachim had 
passed away. 

All that had passed between them, nevertheless, 
on that occasion might have been proclaimed on the 
housetops. So likewise might the conversation that 
followed upon their chance meeting at the house of a 
mutual friend. This, however, proves nothing. The 
Chinese, it is said, make the same word do duty for 
a hundred different meanings, according to the key 
in which they utter it; and even commonplace Eng- 
lish phrases put on quite a new significance when 
they are pronounced with a certain inflexion that 
differentiates them from their compeers. Still, the fact 


THE PENANCE OF POET/A JAMES . 


II 


remains that Portia and her admirer said nothing that 
might not have been taken down by a shorthand re- 
porter and printed in a manual for daily use in crowd- 
ed drawing-rooms. Even when she declared one day 
that it was her firm intention to go to the Academy 
one of these mornings before the doors were opened, 
Harry did not venture to do more than take silent note 
of the same. They were not upon terms that war- 
ranted his offering himself as a guide, but he treasured 
the announcement in his heart, and thenceforth, for 
eight successive mornings, the policeman on duty at 
the doors of Burlington House was not more punctual 
in his attendance than he. On the ninth he had his 
reward. Portia, alone and unattended (this sequence 
of words is sanctioned by custom, though for my part 
I have always thought two of them were de trop ), 
made her appearance in the courtyard, her face bright 
with its morning bloom, not quite like that of Shake- 
speare’s schoolboy, and the exhilaration consequent 
upon having successfully achieved her escapade. 
She was so far from being blasee (we greatly need an 
English equivalent for this word) that she had actually 
derived an immense amount of enjoyment from her 
solitary drive down Knightsbridge and Piccadilly in a 
hansom ; the heavily-branched, thickly-leaved trees 
in the Park looming through the mist at an immeasur- 
able distance, the sloping green sward with the fat, 


12 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 


unshorn sheep scattered over its bountiful surface, the 
mighty clubs, still and solemn as temples at that early 
hour — even to the opening shops and the unaccus' 
tomed aspect of the passers-by, all more or less hurry- 
ing on their way to set the work-a-day world going — 
everything she saw upon this matutinal drive was a 
source of admiration or amusement to her. The muf- 
fled influence upon sight and sound of the embryo fog 
exercised a mysterious charm upon her imagination. 
Indeed, if it had not been that, in common with most 
of us, she did not like to withdraw her hand from the 
plough after she had put it thereto, I believe she would 
have forsworn the Academy that morning, and ex- 
changed the long rows of mute pictures within its 
walls for the living, breathing pictures outside. As 
it was, and fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately for 
Harry, she did nothing of the kind. She dismissed her 
hansom — bestowing, in violation of feminine canons, 
a tip upon the driver for the utterly inadequate motive 
that his horse was black and shiny, and that she had 
derived a certain amount of pleasure from the con- 
templation of his vigorous action as he trotted down 
Piccadilly — and made her way up the steps of Burling- 
ton House. 


CHAPTER II. 


To say that Portia was surprised when, upon 
reaching the top, she recognised Harry Tolhurst in 
the tall, square, and somewhat grave-looking young 
man who took off his hat as he approached her, 
would not be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing 
but the truth. Perhaps it would be safer to assume 
that, if his presence did not strike her as owing its 
cause to an entirely miraculous coincidence, his ab- 
sence would not have appeared especially surprising 
to her either. 

In any case, she thought it advisable to feign a 
slight surprise, and to greet him with a “What, you 
here ! ” and an almost imperceptible elevation of the 
eyebrows (which latter, coming under the heading 
of “pencilled/' were one of her strong points), as 
though he were the last person whom she could have 
expected, under the circumstances, to encounter. 

“I always come at this time when I come at all," 
he replied, thinking doubtless of the eight successive 
mornings during which he had done the pied degrue 
on the steps of the Academy before the doors were 
opened. 


*3 


14 THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 

“Oh, then you must know all the pictures by 
heart,” said Portia, cordially, “and you can take 
me straight to those I am supposed to admire. I 
have a catalogue here ; but it was my brother who 
marked it.” 

Harry laughed, and his companion echoed the 
laugh. She delivered up the book to him, for which 
he had extended his hand, without accompanying the 
gesture by a spoken request. She was conscious of 
enjoying the sense of unrestraint the early morning 
meeting seemed to bring with it. It amused her to 
watch his face as he scanned the catalogue. The 
brother to whom she had referred, who was actually 
her step-brother, and some seven-and-twenty years 
older than herself, had brought his own unaided 
judgment to bear upon his selection of the pictures 
that were to guide his little sister’s taste ; and the 
result seemed to furnish a certain amount of inward 
amusement to her friend, which was plainly reflected 
in his face. The Philistine point of view is indeed a 
never-failing source of mirth to the adept, when it 
does not irritate him — a fact, however, which does 
not prevent certain cliques of artists from demolish- 
ing certain other opposing cliques. For it is not only 
doctors who differ, as the saying has it, for the con- 
fusion of the uninitiated, but apostles of every calling 
and every pretension under the sun. Otherwise, 
where would be the point in Pilate’s famous question ? 


THE PENANCE OF PORTI A J AMES . 15 

Portia was in no wise offended by her friend's 
amused expression. Truth to tell, she would have 
liked to see it upon his face a little oftener. Its habit- 
ual cast was set in too severe a mould. He had 
excessively dark, deep-set eyes, and their normal 
aspect was of those of a man who broods. The 
complexion was sallow, and would have suggested 
liver to the materially disposed. The mouth was in 
a great measure concealed under a drooping black 
moustache ; but its lines, as far as could be seen, 
were indicative of a somewhat cheerless disposition 
of mind. One could almost imagine that the sable- 
coloured eyes and hair had given their hue to the 
temperament. When this chronic gloom gave way 
to a rare smile, the effect was like that of intense 
sunlight against the background of an inky sky, 
which, as everyone knows, has an irradiating effect 
upon the landscape. Harry’s smile was almost a 
revelation to Portia. Her appreciation of it inclined 
her to see the pictures under his guidance with quite 
a new zest ; and, the doors being opened, they 
passed in together upon the easy footing qf a pair of 
old friends, instead of that of two young people who 
were hovering upon the brink of a flirtation. The 
catalogue remained in Harry’s hands, definitely 
closed. 

“But you might mark a fresh lot,” said Portia, 
pleadingly. “I’m sure to mix up the pictures you 


1 6 THE PENANCE OF POET/A JAMES . 

show me with those my brother wanted me to see. 
Don't you think any of them were worth marking, 
then ? ” 

“Not any that I have seen so far," said Harry, 
frankly. Whereat they both laughed again. 

Poor Wilmer," said Portia. (Wilmer, originally 
a baptismal name, had become the prefix by which 
her elder brother's name of plain James had become 
converted into that of Wilmer-James.) “As long as 
I remember him— even when we were living in the 
bush out in Australia, you know — he used to talk 
about Claudes and Ruysdaels as though he knew all 
about them. I had the profoundest belief in his 
knowledge until we came home ; but I have lost 
faith in so many things since then." 

“ He has a kind of a picture-gallery, hasn't he?" 
said Harry, in tones that were alike doubtful and 
encouraging. 

“Yes ; he has a kind of a one," repeated Portia, 
briskly ; then with a wicked look in her eyes, 
“principally old masters." 

“Old masters!" Harry's tone was distinctly 
sceptical. “All his own selection, I suppose?" 

“Yes, all!" Here Portia's voice betrayed the 
triumph she felt. “Ruysdaels and Claudes — those 
are his favourites. He went over to the Hotel Dieu 
last week for a sale, and he brought back a Claude 
about that big " — (there were vestiges of colonial 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 


*7 

looseness of expression in Portia's conversation that 
occasionally disconcerted her hearers) — “ just about, 
I should think ” — she indicated a space of some half- 
yard square with her hands as she spoke. “I was 
told that the thing to admire in it was a kind of 
coppery glow ; and I could see that," doubtfully ; 
“but then I could see nothing else. Would you 
admire such a picture, do you think ? ” 

“ I should like to see it first," said Harry guardedly. 
He was thinking that a private view, under Portia's 
guidance, of the remarkable gallery of the “old- 
master "-bitten Australian would be a charming sequel 
to their walk round the Academy this morning. 

“ Would you ? I'm sure Wilmer would be delighted 
to show it you, then," declared Portia, innocently. 
“But now let us set to work. I wonder if I shall 
have the courage to tell you what pictures I like. 
You can always tell me why I shouldn't and 
mustn't." 

“ I dare say you should and must most of the time. 

I have a great belief in your natural instincts as 
regards art " 

“Like Wilmer," she interrupted him. “ Only it's 
not art, but wine. He will insist on making me 
taste his old ‘ cru '— doesn’t that sound learned ? — 
and the Australian wines he gets from his Yarraman 
vines. He says wine should be judged by a pure, 
unvitiated palate ; and somehow — it's very funny — 
but I do generally manage to guess right." 


1 8 THE PENANCE OP PORTIA JAMES. 

All this time Harry had been leading her through 
rooms Nos. i and 2, with never a pause on the way. 
Portia was vaguely aware of canvases bright with 
brilliant sea-shores, and green rivers whereon white- 
robed damsels were afloat in greener boats. She 
would have liked to stop before some of these, but 
he led her on relentlessly until he brought her up be- 
fore a portrait by Herkomer, which he bade her look 
at and tell him what she thought of it. Portia, was 
interested at once. 

“But then there is something to be said for the 
model/' she observed, after she had admired it with 
unaffected heartiness. “One would say there was 
such a straightforward soul looking through those 
eyes, wouldn't one ? That must make it much easier, 
I should think, for an artist." 

“Much easier," assented Harry. “ A true portrait- 
painter finds himself in the position of a kind of in- 
voluntary Father Confessor. But I wasn’t thinking 
so much of the expression as the work. " 

And thereupon he entered into considerations of 
drawing, and colouring, and technique, which, being 
all new to Portia, gave her the sensation of being led 
to the threshold of some vast unexplored region, 
peopled with ideal presentments of all the persons 
and objects she encountered in her everyday life. 

“ Oh, how I wish I had been born an artist," she 
said enthusiastically, after nearly two hours — she had 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 


19 

forgotten all about the limits of her leave of absence 
by this time — had been spent in going from picture 
to picture at Harry's bidding. “You must find your 
life very full and happy always." 

“ Indeed I don't. It is the life of a Sisyphus, for 
the most part. What, are you going away already ? 
Well, there is just one little painting I should like you 
to see before you go. I won't give you any opinion 
about it. I want to know whether you like it your- 
self." 

His voice sounded nervous and hurried, and Portia 
was perfectly aware that the picture she was expected 
to be honest about was his own. She hoped in her 
heart she would like it. Without establishing the 
standard laid down in the novels of the Flowery Em- 
pire for the regulation of the affections which makes 
Passion dependent upon the proficiency in classic 
lore of the adored object, she could not help feeling 
that she would like Mr. Tolhurst better if his work 
appealed to her sympathies. But when she finally 
found herself confronted with it, she was obliged to 
admit that the first impression was one of bewilder- 
ment and non-comprehension. Harry had chosen 
for, his theme the hackneyed subject — old as the sea- 
sons, and young as spring-time — of the Madonna and 
Child. To Portia, who had never seen Munkacsy's 
“ Christ before Pilate," nor “ The Last Supper" of 
Uhde, with its wondrous stamp of mystic realism, 


20 the PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 

there was something so unaccustomed in the modern 
treatment of the theme that she was aghast. The 
Madonna was a young woman in flesh and blood 
like herself — of a commoner type — “ only so much 
handsomer/' she added mentally — and the expression 
in her dark eyes was rather one of wistful pride than 
of confident glorification. She had working fingers, 
and the hands which held the child on her lap had 
evidently known manual labour. Portia could not 
appreciate the conscientious execution of the Jewish 
garb in white and blue, for all her interest was cen- 
‘ tered upon the manner in which the faces had been 
treated. The picture of the child — a realistic present- 
ment of an eighteen-months-old infant, with curiously 
solemn, prominent blue eyes — seemed to arrest her 
attention. After a long and puzzled pause, she turned 
her face towards her companion. Harry had never 
seen it look so grave before. 

“Well?" he said interrogatively — there had been 
many people in front of the picture when they had 
first approached it, but now the place was vacant 
— “what do you make of it ? ” 

“I can hardly say," answered Portia — her voice 
had a little tremor in it. “I am going through such a 
curious experience. How or where I cannot say — 
but I have seen something like that picture before. 
I have seen it or I have dreamed it. Don't you 
know what it is to meet a face in the street that re- 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 2 I 

calls some other face ? you cannot tell whose ? Or 
to have the impression of a dream when you wake 
in the morning that you can never, never lay hold 
of? That is how I feel in front of your picture. It 
makes me almost fancy that I have stood here with 
you before, and that I know what you are going to 
say. I am afraid it prevents me from looking at it 
properly. ... It is very good, though, isn't it ! ” — - 
she added hurriedly and demurely. 

For all reply Harry was rude enough to laugh. He 
laughed so genuinely and with such thorough en- 
joyment that Portia, somewhat abashed, laughed too. 
What was more, he did not even excuse himself for 
his laughter. But it was impossible to be offended 
by it, for the reason that it conveyed a subtle assur- 
ance that whatever she had said to move it, far from 
being displeasing to him, was something that had 
only drawn him closer to her. In an instant, how- 
ever, he had become grave again. “ You ask me if 
it is very good — well, no. To give you my candid 
opinion, I think it is very bad. I am sorry I exposed 
it, as the French call it. But what you say about 
your being reminded of something you have seen 
before is a puzzle to me. I believe you are one of 
the most truthful persons I ever met — no, I don't 
jump at conclusions — but I have watched you as you 
looked at the pictures, and I am sure of what I say 
— yet you can't have seen anything like this before. 
The picture has never been out of my studio.'' 


22 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 


“I can't account for it either," said Portia, plaint- 
ively ; ‘‘but the feeling is there, all the same. And 
what is the most uncomfortable, it suggests some- 
thing unhappy. How I wish I could explain it. Do 
you believe in spirits and all that kind of thing ? ” 
“Believe there are things undreamed of in our 
philosophy ? Of course I do. Everyone who thinks 
at all must believe that much." 

“Then you think an impression like this one of 
mine may have something in it ? ” 

She put the question anxiously, for the vague fore- 
boding that had come upon her as her eyes first en- 
countered the picture seemed to gain in consistence 
as she looked more closely into it. The prominent 
blue orbs of the child, with their unabashed infant 
gaze, threatened to haunt her in the days to come. 

“What can it mean?" she said again, without 
waiting for Harry's reply. No one could give a 
satisfactory solution of the mystery, which was, after 
all, entirely a subjective one. But as she parted from 
her companion at the outer gate of Burlington House, 
in the midst of the later fashionable throng, her erst- 
while joyousness seemed to have departed from her. 
He reproached himself with having allowed her to 
over-tire herself. 

“You went at the pictures with all the zeal of a 
neophyte," he said, “and I never thought of hold- 
ing you back. You should have told me you were 
getting tired " 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 


2 i 

“Oh, but I wasn’t indeed,” she assured him 
eagerly. “ I did enjoy seeing them so much, un- 
til ” she stopped short, and gave vent to her emo- 

tion in a half-hysterical little laugh. “I'm afraid 
you must think me so awfully silly ” 

“What, I? Think you silly! Oh, my dear Miss 
James ! ” 

He stopped suddenly ; annoyed at the weakness of 
his own disclaimer. Yet what was he to do? The 
very longing that beset him to say so much more 
than he had any warrant for saying seemed, in bib- 
lical phrase, to place a bridle on his tongue and 
check his utterance ; and the parting between the 
two was so formal that no one could have suspected 
that he was actually carrying away a corner of Por- 
tia's heart that morning, leaving Heaven knows how 
large a share of his own behind him in exchange. 


CHAPTER III. 


Hurrying back to Waratah Lodge, whereby the 
Kensington abode of Wilmer James, standing in its 
own quarter of an acre of garden, was known, 
Portia found there would be only time to get into 
later-day trim before luncheon. Her room, over- 
looking a riotous rose-bud, was a pleasant place to 
fritter away the time in. There were mirrors in 
white-enamel frames that multiplied her figure in all 
manner of unconsciously-becoming poses, and a 
square, low, Liberty-draped couch that might have 
inclined the most prosaic to maiden meditation of a 
pleasantly-dreamy description. The porcelain blues 
and whites of carpet and curtains — the yellow fever 
of decoration had not as yet broken out in every 
household — were suggestive of coolness and cleanli- 
ness. A white, pagoda-shaped cage, containing two 
budgery-guards, that Portia had brought all the way 
from her bush-home — a cage large enough to allow 
the love-sick Hebraic-looking little birds to play at 
pursuing each other through space after a period of 
unlimited fondling — stood upon a table near the 

*4 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 25 

window. The bed in the corner, under its soft con- 
cealment of blue and white crinkly curtains, became 
an unobtrusive appendage to the rest of the furniture 
in a room of such ample dimensions. The pretty 
trifles that are set forth in the West End shops every 
succeeding season, with a view to exciting a con- 
flagration in the pockets of those whose money is 
popularly supposed to “burn” therein, were not 
wanting in Portias room. The “chastest” china 
set — (will not the eighteenth-century use of this ad- 
jective, which, according to dictionary authorities, 
should only be applied to a rosiere or a word, be 
something of a stumbling-block to philologists of the 
future ?) — the chastest china-set, I say, adorned her 
five-o’clock tea-table. There was a minature cuckoo- 
clock on the draped mantle-piece, and white and 
gold book-shelves bore a heterogeneous assemblage 
of the latest novels, poems, and nondescript speci- 
mens of the generally talked-about order of literature. 
Portia’s tastes were nothing if not eclectic, and when 
she found the time to read, which was not very often, 
she could take up with equal appreciation a chap- 
ter of Aurora Leigh or the latest delightfully extra- 
vagant American absurdity. I have no desire to fur- 
nish in this connection a complete catalogue of all her 
possessions, but the one object in her room that she 
would not have allowed us to overlook was her writ- 
ing-table, made to order in celebration of her twenty- 


2 6 the PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 

first birthday, by her brother's command — a munifi- 
cent gift, for he had himself discovered (and knew 
what he had paid for it) the authentic Wouvermans 
enshrined in the lid. For the further protection of the 
precious memento, Wilmer had designed a square 
cover, like an inverted box, which was placed over the 
writing-table when it was not in use, and which gave 
it very much the appearance of a Singer's sewing- 
machine. This, indeed, was the normal aspect it 
presented, for Portia found it easier to scribble off 
her correspondence at an unassuming white-enamel- 
painted table, whereon her buvard , in old-stamped 
leather, found its resting-place. On the day of her 
return from the Academy, however, her eyes were 
instantly attracted to the writing-table by the sight 
of a magnificent bunch of flowers lying upon the 
sewing-machine lid, made up of all manner of 
blooms in season and out of season. But it was 
not the costly charm of speckled orchids or scentless 
camellias that attracted her gaze. It was the sight 
of an assemblage of yellow-beaded mimosa-branches, 
with blossoms of such an amazing quality of thick 
fluffiness that the almond-scent they scattered around 
them seemed to permeate all the air. As she beheld 
these flowers, Portia’s face gathered a new and 
singular expression. The charming London room, 
with its wealth of so-called art equipments, its 
Bond Street bibelots and veiled London atmos- 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 


27 


phere, all melted away. She was riding across 
the far-away Australian plains on a Spring day in 
September, and around and above her the dark 
wattle-trees were shining in their gold-spangled 
robes. She could see again the vision of a man’s 
face next to hers, moving up and down with the horse’s 
trot — the reddish beard and moustache concealing lips 
that had a curious trick of appearing to be for ever 
engaged in the action of tasting, when he was not 
making use of them in speech ; the sanguine hue of 
the hairy cheeks, and the blue eyes set, as the 
French express it, h fleur de tete. She could see her- 
self, a “mere slip of a girl,” with a massive plait 
hanging down her back, the end trailing over the 
saddle, listening to the man’s words as he sought 
to make her understand that, child as she was 
at that time, she was yet the one maid in all the 
world for him. She had believed what he had said 
then, and she was fain to believe it now. She 
had imagined in those days that the exultant sense 
of being a power in the world, of carrying some 
potent magic about with her, that this first wooing 
had brought with it (as, indeed, a first wooing 
brings in every case), was the going-out of her 
heart in response to the appeal she had heard. 

With the wattle-blooms for sole witnesses she had 

% 

allowed the face so near her to come yet nearer still. 
The horse’s flanks were rubbing against each other, 


28 THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 

and an arm had pressed itself close around the body 
of her little holland habit, as they went at a walking 
pace. The red-bearded face had been on a level with 
her own now — John Morrisson, truth to tell, was a 
head and shoulders taller than she, but women ride 
higher than men — and the ever-tasting lips had been 
suffered at last to feed upon her own. She had even 
allowed him to pull up the little gauze veil that pro- 
tected her against the Australian sun and the Austra- 
lian flies, and this first kiss had been understood to 
signify the seal of her betrothal. Well, she had been 
young enough then, in all conscience, to make so 
solemn an engagement ; but John, who was at least 
twenty years older, had held her to it. He was her 
step-brothers partner, but neither of the men had as 
yet developed the Midas-like faculty they afterwards 
acquired of turning all they touched into gold. Por- 
tia’s engagement — she was only sixteen — was never- 
theless interpreted as a serious obligation by the 
head of the house, and nothing but her own passion- 
ate pleading that she should not be married until she 
was twenty-one had saved her from becoming that 
saddest of sacramental victims, a child wife. The 
following year the great silver discovery had been 
made. John Morrisson was credited with the first 
preception of the marvellous possibilities concealed 
under a strip of Queensland bush, but Wilmer James 
had been the one to secretly test the ore, and to bring 


THE PENANCE OP POET/ A JAMES . 


2 9 

the wondrous discovery to a head. To wake and 
find ourselves famous is, perhaps, a more frequent 
experience in these days of rapid reputations than to 
wake and find ourselves millionaires. This, was, how- 
ever, the wonderful fate that befell Portia’s brother 
and his partner. Within a couple of years of the dis- 
covery, they were rich in the eternally-quoted John- 
sonian sense of the word. Wilmer had brought his 
wife and step-sister to England. John had remained 
to superintend the carrying on of the great silver-mine 
operations, or, in Australian parlance, to “boss the 
concern.” It was understood that he should not 
appear upon the horizon — Portia’s horizon, that was 
to say — until she had completed her twenty-first 
year. She was within eighteen months of it at the 
time of her sailing. 

The period of European travelling that followed, 
during which Wilmer had struck out wildly in the 
direction of Claudes and Ruysdaels, the furnishing 
of the Kensington house, and the first experience of 
a real London season — all these had represented a 
dream of delight to Portia. Why did the dream seem 
to be checked by a rude awakening this morning, as 
she looked at the wattle-blooms that greeted her so 
unexpectedly, and read in their golden blobs the 
mute message that John Morrisson had come home? 
Come home ! Come, then, to claim his promise. 
Come for her ! The recollection of the free and happy 


Jo THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 

experience of her morning among the pictures rushed 
into her mind, and with it, and against it, and min- 
gled in some incomprehensible way with the image 
of John himself, the vision of the picture of Harrys 
Madonna and Child flashed through her brain. Had 
the picture, then, brought her a presentiment of her 
approaching fate ? What possible network of discon- 
nected ideas could have entangled the Madonna and 
her Child and John Morrisson in the same meshes ! 
“I should go mad if I were to attempt to make sense 
of it,” said Portia — I am not sure that in her thoughts, 
for she spoke to herself, she did not say, to “ make 
head or tail of it ” — and thereupon she made her way 
towards the flowers with a gait quite unlike the one 
that had been remarked by Harry Tolhurst on 
the steps of the Academy only a few hours pre- 
viously. She was holding the flowers up to her face 
— wattle-blossoms were, in any case, objectively 
lovely, no matter through what channel they reached 
her — when the door was opened from outside, after 
it had been smartly tapped upon, by someone who 
did not even wait for her to say “Come in.” 

Portia turned her head with the dignity of an 
offended queen, but her lips relaxed into a smile as 
she recognised the large Teutonic face of her sister- 
in-law, with grey frisettes surmounting her forehead 
and the fixed red upon the high cheek-bones that 
advancing years, rather than the rouge-pot, had placed 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA j AMES . 31 

there. Mrs. James had found favour in her lord’s 
sight some thirty years previously, at a period when 
youth had condoned the unattested mould of her 
features. She had been engaged in the task of bring- 
ing up the daughters of a neighbouring squatter in 
guttural German-English and the belief that Goethe 
was the light of the world, when Mr. James married 
her, so to speak, off hand. Eligible brides were rare 
upon the Lachlan in those days. Mrs. James proved 
herself as good a Haus-frau as she had been a wor- 
shipper of Goethe, and when, some fifteen years later, 
her husband’s orphaned step-sister was sent up to 
him from Melbourne for protection, she took the little 
creature to her heart in the place of the child she 
would fain have borne him, and brought her up with 
tender care according to her lights. Mr. James did 
not understand German, and I fear Portia’s knowl- 
edge of it did not extend very far beyond the “Ach 
Gotts,” “Gott in Himmels,” and “ So’s,” that she 
heard her step-sister utter a hundred times a day. 
Since her sudden accession to wealth Mrs. James had 
resuscitated a legend that had been almost forgotten 
during her active existence of squatter s helpmate in 
the Australian wilds — a legend whereby the stock 
whence she came was adelig, and she herself, as well 
as her sisters, cousins, and aunts, were adelig like- 
wise. Portia heard for the first time of her step- 
sister’s uncle — a Rittmeister von something — who 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 


32 

had married the daughter of a Graf. It had been 
always understood that they should see these great 
people when they came to Europe ; but beyond a 
visit to a stuffy pension, conducted by the Ritt- 
meister s widowed daughter, nothing had come of 
it. Mrs. James had explained that no one who was 
not adelig was allowed to become an inmate of the 
establishment, and Portia had noticed that a coronet 
was insinuated into all the crochet-worked antima- 
cassars that encumbered the sad-looking reception- 
room. On the other hand, the furniture was terribly 
threadbare, and there was a pungent aroma of bier - 
suppe from the kitchen, which, coupled with an utter 
absence of ventilation in the sitting-room, inspired 
Portia (though she did not say so to her stepmother) 
with a prevention — prejudice, perhaps, would be too 
strong a word — against all that was adelig in the 
German sense. In England, in the beautiful Ken- 
sington mansion, Mrs. James gave the reins to her 
fancy in another direction. She had always been 
economical in her dress — in Germany she had clothed 
herself in her youthful days upon eighty-five marks 
a year. But now she developed a truly Oriental 
imagination as regarded the trailing glories of her 
attire. She would array her portly body in robes 
that the Queen of Sheba might have worn, and, the 
silver mine being apparently inexhaustible, she cul- 
tivated a taste for old lace as a pendant to her hus- 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 


33 

band's taste for old masters, with at least a like 
success. 

Her hasty entrance into Portia's room this morning 
was with the obvious motive, first, of imparting some 
startling piece of news, and, secondly, dazzling her 
vision by her appearance in a gorgeous gown of 
peacock blue, with a trimming that looked like the 
encrusted bands of jewels that adorned the gowns of 
Byzantine empresses. But there was a kind heart 
under the glittering adornments. Beholding a cer- 
tain distressful look in Portia's eyes, after the smile 
had died out of them, Mrs. James plumped down 
into a chair, with a gesture not quite consistent with 
her mediaeval magnificence, and said, with deep- 
voiced sympathy — 

“ Ach meine Liebe ! wherefore art thou sad ? ” 

“ I'm not sad, " said Portia, hastily; she put the 
flowers away from her as she spoke ; then, with a 
sudden, inconsistent change of demeanour, she turned 
her face towards the elder woman. Her eyes were 
full of tears. “ Oh, Emma ! what shall I do ! ” she 
cried in a choked voice. 

44 Liebchen ! Herzchen ! " the incrusted trimming, 
with its aggressive irregularities, forbade the warm- 
hearted Emma from pressing the young girl's head 
to her heart, but she stood up and kissed her and led 
her to the confessional couch, and taking the cold 
young hands into her own, which were of an 
3 


34 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 


uncompromisingly beefy hue, but warm and sympa- 
thising withal, she said : “ Now ! you will bore out 
your heart to me, Liebchen,” and so waited for her 
to speak. 

To put a dramatic sentiment into fitting words 
with a large, fat, expectant face looking anxiously 
into yours, is not always an easy matter. Portia 
felt a strong inclination to laugh, though at heart she 
was in no laughing mood. She compromised matters 
by covering her face with her disengaged hand, as 
she murmured weakly : “ I don't like the thought 

of leaving you and Wilmer, Emma. This year has 
flown by so, and you see there — I have my sum- 
mons. ” 

She nodded in the direction of the magnificent 
flowers scattered over the cover of the writing-table. 
The wattle-blossoms lay with their rich yellow down 
uppermost, and Emma knew just what they signi- 
fied. 

“ Ach ! he is so fond of you," she whispered ; the 
idea that Portia was casting about for a possible 
means of gaining time, and deferring the fulfilment 
of her promise (she dared not think yet of breaking 
it altogether), never seemed to occur to her. “ He 
will be by us to-day at lunch ” — prepositions had 
never been able to take their relative places in the 
English sense in Emma's brain. 

“ At lunch! " repeated Portia, in tones that savoured 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 35 

more of terror than of rapture. “ Then you have 
seen him already. What does he look like ? What 
did he say ? ” 

“ He said, * I go not away until I have seen her, 
Now, it was to tell you he waits below, I must run 
so rash into you room awhile ago. Ach I how white 
you look then, my treasure. Golt in Himmell one 
would say you were even disposing yourself to faint. ” 
“ Nonsense ! I never fainted in my life/’ Portia's 
tone had taken a sudden resolve, but the fact that the 
blood had fled from her cheeks, leaving them, for 
an instant, of an unnatural whiteness, was incon- 
testable. “ He is below, you say. I will go to him 
at once. Is he alone ? ” 

Mrs. James nodded signficantly. “ In the library 

— there awaits he alone your coming. Now ” 

But Portia was gone before she could say more. 
The black-lace, flowered-wreathed hat was thrown 
aside, and she was running swiftly down the broad, 
heavily-carpeted stairs. A sudden and desperate 
resolution had seized her while her sister-in-law had 
been talking. Alas ! that our ‘'high resolves ” should 
be so difficult of execution. By the time her fingers 
were on the handle of the library door, her courage 
was oozing out at the tips of them. After all, what 
possible pretext could she advance for becoming a 
renegade from her word ! Had she not come to 
Europe in the character of an engaged girl ? Did not 


3 6 THE PENANCE OE PORTIA JAMES . 

everyone who had seen the parting on the mail- 
steamer between herself and John Morrisson know 
she was his affianced wife ? Had her brother, her 
sister-in-law, the very servants who had come home 
with them, her Australian friends, any doubt that she 
belonged to him prospectively ? Had not their 
English friends — everybody indeed, excepting recent 
and casual acquaintances, like Harry Tolhurst for 
instance — been apprised of the fact? Moreover, in 
what were her relations with her betrothed, or the 
world in general, changed since she had seen him 
last? Was it only that the eternal reproach levelled 
by Hamlet at her sex might have been addressed to 
her individually? Was she frail, and fickle, and 
false by nature, that after hardly eighteen months' 
separation from the man to whom she had pledged 
herself, she should feel — without any assignable 
motive — that she would have been beholden to him 
for staying away yet longer? Under the influence 
of a flood of similar reflections, Portia slowly turned 
the handle of the library door, and entered, as one 
walking in her sleep, into the presence of John Mor- 
risson, 


CHAPTER IV. 


Whatever Portia might have contemplated saying, 
before she entered the room, the mere physical 
power to utter it was taken from her ere she was 
well inside, for she had hardly had time to close the 
door after her, when she found herself enveloped in 
so close an embrace that she was literally deprived 
of breath. She was conscious of being kissed with 
hungry, devouring kisses, upon forehead, lips and 
neck, until she was fain to plant her two small hands 
against the great shoulders that overshadowed her 
and push them away (after the fashion in which the 
man of Thessaly jumped into the quick-set hedge) 
that is to say, with all' her “ might and main/’ 

“ How can you ? ” she cried, flushing and panting. 
“How cruel of you! You hurt me so, and you 
frighten me so ! ” 

“My darling, my darling!” he said, releasing 
her. “ Haven't we a two years’ score to settle ? ” 

He held her at arm’s length from him, half-seated 
upon the edge of the library table, and scanned with 
eager scrutiny her face and figure, She had a kind 


38 the penance OF POET/A JAMES. 

of helpless sense that he was appraising her — taking 
in her points, indeed, as she had seen him do upon 
the station when he was judging a young horse that 
had been recently run in. (His judgment as regarded 
a horse or a sheep was that of an expert. ) His lips 
had not lost their old trick of tasting (with nothing 
tangible before them to taste), while he was thinking. 
Fortia reflected that he was bigger and burlier than 
when she had last seen him. There were people 
who even now would have considered him a hand- 
some man, in a Henry VIII. or William Rufus kind 
of way. She had never been aware before of the 
curious hue — a sort of opaque blue — of his globular 
eyes. She made these observations half-uncon- 
sciously to herself as she stood in his powerful grasp. 
The somewhat rough handling she had experienced 
had produced a singular feeling of lassitude, and 
though — as she had declared to her sister-in-law a 
few moments back — she had never fainted in her 
life, and was not in the least what is called an hysteri- 
cal subject, she felt now as though to creep into a 
dark room, and there lie down and cry herself to 
sleep, would be an untold relief. 

She uttered, nevertheless, no protest while her 
lover was contemplating her, remaining passive until 
he made a movement as though to draw her towards 
him again. This she resisted. 

“ You’re a lot prettier than you used to be,” was 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 


39 

his verdict, when she had finally suffered him to pass 
his arm around her waist, as she stood by his side, 
with her back supported against the table. “You 
were pretty enough out in the bush, but you're be- 
witchingly pretty now. I expect you've had no end 
of fellows after you in London. Come now, tell 
me all about it ! ” 

* 4 There's n othing to tell, " said Portia, gravely. Her 
voice sounded like a funeral knell in her own ears. 
“We were travelling, as you know, until quite lately, 
and we don't know nearly as many people here as 
we did in Melbourne. How was it " — with a forced 
attempt to resume her natural manner — “you were 
able to come home so much sooner than you expected, 
Mr. Morrisson ? " 

“ Don't you Mr. Morrisson me ," said John, turning 
her face towards his own for another kiss ; “or I'll 
make you pay a double forfeit every time. Well, 
you were asking about the coming home. I wasn't 
due for six weeks, was I ? " 

“ No, not for six whole weeks," she replied with 
a sigh. This was a form of assent that was open to 
two interpretations. It might, from one point of 
view, have been construed in the most unflattering 
sense to the person to whom it was given. John 
elected (as he would have said himself) to give it the 
contrary signification. 

“ Six whole weeks ! " he repeated, “that's a devil 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 


40 

of a time to a man in love, Portia, and Fve been 
in love with you now for over five years. Fve been 
working like a demon to square up accounts and get 
home. Thank the Lord, that time’s over, and now 
we can get fixed up as soon as you please/' 

She was silent. The numbness of despair was 
creeping over her, and curiously enough, as the pros- 
pect of losing her liberty loomed in terrible proximity 
before her mental gaze, the obtrusive vision of Harry 
Tolhurst’s Madonna and Child coupled itself in her 
mind with her impending destiny. She could see 
once more the wistful eyes of the Virgin -mother 
looking out from their frame of strong black hair, 
and the unabashed gaze that marked the intent blue 
orbs of the Child. The impression of the whole was 
as strong as though it had been actually photographed 
on her brain, and she was so overcome by it that for 
a moment she almost forgot the actual business on 
hand, as the commercial people say — a business, 
nevertheless, that was of mighty import to herself. 

And here I must put in a word in behalf of Portia's 
apparently helpless and weak-minded course of ac- 
tion, two epithets which certainly do not apply to her 
character, however much her conduct may appear 
deserving of them. If her approaching marriage was 
actually becoming in her eyes the prototype of the 
sword which the wretched Damocles saw — as the 
juvenile story-books tell us-^“ suspended over his 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 


41 


head by a single hair/’ why did she consent to dally 
under the same ? She was still her own mistress, in 
the sense that she had not been through the dread 
ceremony which obliges a woman to swear eternal 
love and constancy and obedience to inconstant man, 
and might reasonably be supposed to have been able 
to withdraw her word. Against this supposition, 
however, there is more than one argument to be ad- 
vanced, of which I will only mention those that had 
most weight with Portia herself. In the first place, 
it was now, as John Morrisson. himself had reminded 
her, more than five years since she had given him 
her troth. He had never, as she firmly believed, 
looked with eyes of longing in the direction of any 
other woman whatsoever since. Not that Portia 
thought very much of this accredited warrant of a 
sole and exclusive passion. Despite her varied read- 
ing, she had retained, as regarded many vexed ques- 
tions an artless mind, and believed that people — 
men especially — did many things in books that they 
would never dream of doing in real life, and that, on 
the whole, exo-connubial affections were mainly to 
be met with in romances. In her own innocent eyes 
she was more than half married to John already, 
and this feeling assisted the aforementioned one of 
her belief in his enduring love, to hold her bound to 
him. What assurance could she give herself if now, 
at the end of his five years’ probation, she should 


42 the PE NA JVC E OF PORTIA JAMES . 

drive him away for no other reason than a want of 
fidelity on her own part — what assurance could she 
have that the same contingency might not occur the 
next time she should lose (or fancy she lost) her heart 
to somebody else ? It was not as though she had 
given way to a sudden engouement and repented of it 
a week later, for she had known John almost as long 
as she could remember. She had been rather in awe 
of him as a little girl, and even to the time when he 
had in a measure appropriated her, while she was yet 
in short frocks. And she was not (no, certainly she 
was not) in love with anybody else. That Harry 
Tolhurst’s deep-set black eyes and dreamy gentleness 
of manner should contrast themselves in her imagina- 
tion with the ardent eyes and vehement caresses of 
her betrothed was, she hoped, attributable mainly 
to the fact that his picture of the Madonna haunted 
her so persistently. In any case, she had no reason, 
save one that would appear like a mere feminine 
caprice, to urge for sending John away at the present 
moment. The most she could hope to do was to 
gain time, and how could she answer for it that when 
she had been allowed to accustom herself again to 
him she might not be quite ready and willing to be 
married to him ? Wilmer’s heart, for one, was set 
upon the match ; more than ever perhaps since the 
wonderful episode of the great silver-mine discovery. 
Moreover, ways of behaving that were disconcerting 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 


43 

in a lover might not matter so much in a husband. 
And as long as the wedding-day was not actually 
fixed there would be time to reason with herself and 
to bring herself ultimately into a more befitting frame 
of mind. Very possibly she was too confused just 
now to make her thoughts worth heeding seriously. 
All these are not, it may be said, arguments of a very 
forcible kind, but they had the effect of keeping Portia 
standing with her back against the table and her 
lovers arm round her waist. 

“ Why, yes !” he said again ; “ there's nothing to 
stand in the way of our being married straight off — 
as soon as you please. What's the use of bothering 
about a trousseau ? You'll never have anything 
prettier, to my mind, than what you've got on now ; 
and you shall buy all the best in the London shops 
afterwards, if you’ve a mind to. My word, my pet, 
but you'll show 'em the way ! I was thinking how 
we’d show you off in the Park this morning as I was 
coming up in the train from Plymouth. What sort of 
a mount have you got — eh ? " 

“ Oh ! not bad ! " Portia’s interest was readily 
aroused in equine matters, as John knew of old. 
“ A big bay, with black points — very nearly a thor- 
oughbred. He’s only a livery-stable horse, but 
Wilmer made it a condition with the keeper that no 
one should ride him but me.” 

She did not say /, as, doubtless, she ought to have 


44 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 


said; but Portia’s education, such as it was, had been 
finished in the bush, and John was the last person in 
the world to notice the slip. 

“ We’ll have something better than that for you be- 
fore long,” he said, drawing her yet closer to his side. 
“Do you remember the little chestnut filly I was 
going to break in for you ? She’s grown into the 
prettiest mare you ever set your eyes on. A regular 
picture. I was offered a couple of hundred for her 
down the day before we started by a fellow who 
wanted to enter her for the Maiden Plate. She’s worth 
a lot more than that, though. Well, I’ve brought her 
home for you. She’ll be up in town this week. And 
jump ! — good God, you should see her jump ! You’ve 
not had any cross-country riding, I suppose? ” 

“No! but I should like it of all things,” with a 
pretty flush of anticipation rising in her cheeks. 
“There are no kangaroo in England, are there?” 

“ None that I ever heard of, excepting at the Zoo. 
But fox-hunting’s about as good a sport as you can 
find. Wait till next season comes round, and we've 
got the filly fit — you’ll take the shine out of some of 
them, I expect ! ” 

“ I remember the filly you mean quite well now,” 
declared Portia. She had been apparently musing 
deeply for the space of half a minute. “You won 
the Oaks with her mother. Oh ! by the bye” (with 
an air of awakened interest), “ what became of John, 


THE PP NANCE OF POkTIA JAMES. 


45 

the trainer? Do you remember when his wife was 
bitten by the snake, and you cut the place out with 
your pocket-knife — and she died of something else, 
after all, poor woman, the same year?” 

Launched upon this retrospective tide, Portia had 
been looking into a still recent past and had there- 
fore failed to take note of the change that came over 
her lovers face as she made mention of John, the 
trainer. It was an ugly change, for it set an ugly 
expression upon it. Whatever chain of associations 
the name might have suggested, the links thereof had 
evidently chafed John Morrisson's soul in bygone 
days. He did not speak for an instant, but his lips 
continued to work with the tasting movement Portia 
knew so well. Like the men she had read of in the 
novels, he was unconsciously gnawing his mous- 
tache. Quite unsuspectingly, however, she con- 
tinued to perform the feat known in figurative 
French as that of putting her pieds dans le plat. 

“ And the daughter he was so proud of,” she went 
on, ruminating ; “ the one who had had such a 'rare 
bringing up '? I left the station before she came up, 
and I never went back to it afterwards. Did she reach 
him all right? He was so solitary after his wife died. 
I hope she is keeping house for him now.” 

Still no answer ! Portia looked round in surprise. 
John had released her waist from the pressure of his 
encircling arm, and had actually turned his back upon 


46 the PEHANCE OF POET/A JAMES . 

her. He was looking, or pretending to look in his 
pocket-book for something that it was apparently im- 
perative he would find at this particular moment, and 
none other. In the process of looking he had bent 
his head upon his chest, and Portia could see that the 
blood had mounted to his temples in a warm 
red flame. 

“ You don't tell me ! ” she said, half vexed. 

“ Tell you what? "he answered, roughly; “you're 
asking me a lot of questions about people I haven’t 
come across for the Lord knows how long. I've been 
up in the north of Queensland, you know ; and let 
me see, when I did stop at the station on one occa- 
sion, the Willets — father and daughter — had left." 

“Oh, dear! I’m sorry," said Portia, simply; “it 
was John Willet who first taught me to ride, I believe, 
and he was never tired of talking of his ' little lass ' in 
the old country. We were about of an age — she and 
I — he used to say." 

All this time John was still continuing to turn over 
the contents of his pocket-book, unheeding, to all ap- 
pearance, of Portia's reflections : she, therefore held 
her peace, and carried them on mutely. She was 
thinking now of a time anterior even to the one when 
she had first known him — a time at which she had 
been alternately fondled and scolded by Emma, as 
she trotted bare-legged about the yard and garden 
that surrounded the Paradinyah homestead. The 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 47 

station and all its appurtenances had represented to 
to her in those days what the duck-pond represented 
to Andersen's Ugly Duckling — a vast region, with 
unlimited resources for the arousing of interest and 
amusement of every imaginable description. She 
was made familiar with the draughting of cattle, the 
shearing of sheep, and the branding of calves and 
horses, almost as soon as she could run alone, and to 
her infant imagination these were the events round 
which the whole world revolved. As a matter of fact, 
her own world revolved around them ; for what con- 
ception has a six-year-old brain of other than a sub- 
jective universe ? One of her clearest recollections 
was of the first time she had ridden into the township 
for the letters with John Willet, mounted on an old 
mare of such amazing girth that her little feet dan- 
gling down from the saddle had hardly reached to the 
animal’s ribs. Portia was, however, a practiced rider 
even at that time — for she would gallop her own pony 
barebacked through the scrub, mounted for the most 
part a califourchon like a Sioux chief. She had a 
miniature stock-whip, which she learned to crack in 
quite a professional way. It was not until she had 
come home for the holidays after the first year that 
she had been sent, protesting and weeping, to a Mel- 
bourne boarding-school, that John Morrisson, a newly- 
arrived inmate of the Paradinyah homestead, had ap- 
peared on her horizon. It was he who had brought 


48 the pejvance of Portia James. 

money into the concern, and she had grown up with 
a kind of a vague belief that they were all under great 
obligations to him, and that Wilmer would inevita- 
bly have “gone broke ” but for his timely interven- 
tion. Of her own parents, dead within a twelve- 
month of each other, when she was barely five years 
old, she retained but the most shadowy of recollec- 
tions. Her father, as she knew, had married young, 
and Wilmer had been his only son. The mother had 
died at the birth. After five-and-twenty years of a 
widowers existence, spent in roving about the world, 
he had drifted to Australia, purchased a bush property 
for his son, and finally contracted a second marriage 
in Melbourne, with a girl some thirty years younger 
than himself. Portia knew little about her mother. 
She had gathered, however, that she was beautiful, 
though of insignificant extraction — not “ adeligj as 
Emma said, with a pitying shake' of the head. All 
her own understanding of family ties, all that she 
had ever known of family love and tenderness and 
authority, she owed to her step-brother and his wife. 
Enveloped in a moral atmosphere at once bracing 
and tender from her childhood upwards, it had never 
occurred to her to regret that she was not only 
orphaned, but sisterless and brotherless as well, in 
the ordinary acceptation of the phrase. She never 
doubted that she had had as large share of love and 
care as falls to the lot of the most loved and looked- 


HE PENANCE OF POET/ A JAMES . 


49 

after of children, and that Wilmer and Emma only 
“ wanted her good/' This conviction, that she held 
as firmly as — more firmly maybe than — the Articles 
set forth in the Creed in her Church of England 
Prayer-book, might have explained in a great mea- 
sure the attitude of passive acceptance of her fate 
that had marked her engagement with John Morrisson. 
Even the request she had proffered to be allowed to 
wait until she was of age before the marriage was 
consummated was the result of an inspiration so bold 
and unprecedented that she was unable to account 
for it to herself. Thinking over the past this morn- 
ing, with the future in the guise of her returned lover 
standing mysteriously taciturn by her side, Portia 
was thunderstruck to find that the vision of the Ma- 
donna’s effigy seemed to blend itself with those dis- 
tant scenes, almost as determinedly as it had blended 
itself with the impression of vague terror provoked 
awhile ago by John’s suggestion that she should 
marry him without delay. What magic made her 
perpetually embroil in her mind matters so wide apart 
in reality ! Why, out of all the pictures she had seen 
that morning, did this one alone rise like a spectre 
before her, and spread its blurred hues over whatever 
passage in her life she might happen to pass under 
review ? In olden times people would have declared 
there was some deadly witchcraft in the painting. 
Why did the Madonna’s eyes, above all, haunt her 
4 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 


5 ° 

as though they had some special message for her 
that none else in the world could understand ? These 
thoughts, begot, as she would fain have believed, 
“of nothing but vain fantasy," continued neverthe- 
less to run riot through her brain, until she was sud- 
denly brought back (like a witness in the Supreme 
Court) to the “facts of the case ” by John's trium- 
phant voice. 

“By George ! I thought I'd lost it. See here, my 
pet, what I've brought you from the mine — quite close 
to it, that’s to say. No — you shan’t have it till you’ve 
given me a kiss first." 

He had seated himself quite upon the edge of the 
table by this time, and was holding her close to his 
knee like a child. She kissed him timidly on the 
cheek, in such evident terror of fresh demonstrations 
on his part that he forbore for once to press his advan- 
tage. 

“You know you’re going to be a rich woman, 
don’t you, dear? I expect you’ll have money enough 
to get as many gimcracks as you’ve a fancy for. 
Still, here's a thing I want you to wear for my sake. 
It’s sui generis — it is. I found it myself up in Queens- 
land, and I got it set round with diamonds in Syd- 
ney. I guess its about the right size for you — ain’t 
it?" 

As he spoke, he unfolded, from a triple wrapping 
of soft tissue-paper, a ring composed of a gold band 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 5 1 

upon which was mounted a magnificent opal encir- 
cled by a setting of splendidly flashing brilliants. 
This he passed over the third finger of Portia’s left 
hand — holding it aloft as he did so to admire the 
effect. 

“Isn’t it a stunner?” he said. “But look here, 
darling, let me just twist it round — this way — to 
make believe it’s your wedding-ring, and we’re man 
and wife ! ” 

“No, no! ” cried Portia, hastily withdrawing her 
hand, “it’s much too pretty as it is. I love opals ; I 
wonder what fool it was who first thought of calling 
them unlucky ! ” 

“Unlucky, are they? By Jove, if I thought there 
were anything in it, I'd throw the ring out of the 
window this moment.” 

“ Not for worlds ! ” she protested, closing her fin- 
gers tightly upon her treasure, while John seized her 
hand and feigned to wrench them open. Finally 
the matter was compromised by her allowing him to 
kiss them all in succession, a pastime which was only 
put an end to by the timely intervention of the gong 
clanging forth its summons to lunch. 


CHAPTER V. 


The breakfast-room in the Jameses' Kensington 
abode wherein they chose to take their mid-day meal, 
opened upon a conservatory that Wilmer had con- 
secrated entirely to Australian trees and flowers. 
The half acrid, half aromatic, perfume of blue gum 
and peppermint saplings, that by-and-by would shoot 
up like Jack's beanstalk until nothing short of a ca- 
thedral dome would have sufficed to shelter their ex- 
uberant growth, was wafted therefrom into the apart- 
ment. Miniature Murray pines, with their rich green 
bornbe surfaces, fern-trees from Tasmania, set in 
humid moss-grown beds, over which an artificial 
water-course trickled perpetually — more wonderful 
still, flowering specimens of the scarlet waratah and 
infoliated grass-tree blossom from Mount Wellington, 
set against a background of brilliantly-flowering 
creepers from New South Wales, made of this con- 
servatory a place for an exiled Australian to dream 
in. John was loud in his praises of it, as he sat down 
to the exquisitely appointed table facing his betrothed, 
while Mr. and Mrs. James formally installed them- 
selves at the head and foot of the same. 

To hold up the assembled party to the eyes of 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 


53 


English readers as thoroughly typical Australians, 
would be as unjust a proceeding as was that of Dumas 
pere when he declared that all the inhabitants of 
Antwerp were roux because he had encountered two 
red headed girls on his way to the hotel. No one is 
thoroughly typical unless he be a savage or a 
peasant. Portia and her relatives retained their own 
underlying individualities none the less that they had 
been influenced in their outward bearing and modes 
of expressing themselves by a long sojourn in the back 
blocks of Victoria, in daily contact with all sorts and 
conditions of men — broken-down gentlemen, Eng- 
lish yokels, bush-hands, and the like. After all, the 
moulding of character by outward influences alone 
is not a work to be achieved in one generation, or 
what would become of the theory of heredity, upon 
which everything is supposed to depend, more or 
less, in our present scientific age ? If these people 
strike the English reader, therefore, as differing in 
certain respects from those he is accustomed to meet 
in his daily walk through life, let him remember that 
the differences which will strike him most are the 
merely superficial ones resulting from an occasional 
departure from the conventional rules of speech and 
behaviour that guide his own outward conduct, and 
that in all the main essentials they are, au fo7id y neither 
more like him nor more unlike him than though chance 
had willed that they should be born and brought up 
Qn the selfsame patch of earth as himiself, A djf- 


54 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 


ference in the vocabulary of the native-born Austra- 
lian, or long resident in Australia, of the not too 
highly-educated order, as well as a difference in his 
tone of voice and enunciation, from that of a person 
belonging to a corresponding class in England, is 
one of those facts, however, which “ nobody can 
deny/' I am not going to enter in this connection 
upon a disquisition respecting the relative merits of 
what Mrs. James would have called “ hofisch” Eng- 
lish, and the English that has been coined out of 
entirely new conditions by pioneers and backwoods- 
men. Suffice it to say, there is a difference, and 
Portia was never more sensible of it than when she 
returned, as on the present occasion, from moving 
among a London society crowd, into the Anglo- 
Australian social atmosphere of the Kensington 
house. Her sister-in-law's unconscious colonial 
slang, grafted on to a German mode of speech and 
pronunciation which she had never been able to for- 
swear, struck her as being funnier than she had ever 
been aware of before. And when she heard Emma 
gravely accusing her London visitors of “ pooting 
on zide,” she was fain to invent a reason, which had 
not the remotest connection with the actual one, for 
breaking into an unadvised laugh. 

“ Might fancy yourself on the Plains again, 
mightn't you ? ” said Wilmer to his guest, as they sat 
down to lunch — he had placed him just where John 
gould obtain a full view of the most flourishing of 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 


55 


the eucalyptus saplings through the artistically- 
opened Liberty portieres that closed the conservatory 
— “ always barring the mosquitoes and the flies.” 

Wilmer James was what is called dapper in figure ; 
light of build, though of a fair middle height. He 
was clean-shaven, and notunlike a squireen as re- 
presented in some delicately tinted engraving of 
seventy or eighty years back. His morning suit had 
something of a sporting cut, and he wore a monocle 
in his left eye. This, however, was a habit of very 
recent adoption, and practice had not as yet made him 
perfect in it. His hat had never been known to sit 
otherwise than a little tilted to one side on his head. 
He had been a well-known figure upon Australian 
race-courses for years, and none would have been 
more astonished than the people with whom he had 
horsey relations (of a strictly honourable kind as far 
as he himself was concerned) had they known to 
what extravagant lengths he would go when an op- 
portunity for backing his judgment — in the purchase 
of some pseudo “ old master ” — came in his way. If 
humanity is not typical, as we have just essayed to 
show, neither is it consistent. The most adverse 
tastes are frequently to be met with in one and the 
same individual. There seems, it is true, to be little 
apparent connection between a love of horse-racing 
and a passion for Claudes and Ruysdaels, which last, 
to be properly followed up, would necessitate a long 
and arduous apprenticeship in old-world picture- 


56 the PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 

galleries and museums. And yet it is a fact that 
Wilmer James would spend hundreds and thousands 
upon a sombre-tinted canvas, of which the original 
hues had become merged into blackened greens and 
blues, provided it bore either of the above-mentioned 
great names. What was more, he thoroughly believed 
that he had provided himself with an inexhaustible 
fund of artistic pleasure when he succeeded in ac- 
quiring one or other of these mendacious works of 
art, to which the certainty that only he himself and 
a few of the initiated were capable of tasting it gave 
an added savour. This idee fixe , however, as it cer- 
tainly was, had the advantage of being an entirely 
harmless one, and, excepting for the fact that he be- 
came a “ mark ” for picture-dealers, who occasionally 
“ let him in ” to an enormous extent, was in no way 
detrimental to the piece of mind of his family. It is 
to be wished as much might be said of the weaknesses 
of every nouveau riche who has become “dammed to 
Fame ” in latter years. 

Though John admired his host’s Australian gully , 
as Wilmer called his conservatory, as unreservedly 
as could be wished, he was still better pleased to let 
his eyes rest upon the face just opposite him, that oc- 
casionally intercepted his view of the eucalyptus tree. 
Portia was conscious of his glance, and was feeling 
sadly ill at ease under it. As with his first greeting 
of her, so now in the air of proprietorship with which 
he publicly regarded her, there was something that 


THE PENANCE OF POET/A JAMES. 


57 


made her long to “ turn and flee.” It is Sir Walter 
Scott, I think, who has condensed into a single sen- 
tence words of so much purport, when he speaks in 
one of his romances of two lovers restored to each 
other, who manifest their joy by all the “endearments 
that mutual love at once suggests and sanctions.” 
Where such manifestations spring from a one-sided 
sentiment, as was the case, I fear, with John and 
Portia, they are apt to be more terrifying than re- 
assuring to the non- or wrong-sided one. Portia was 
grateful when Wilmer created a diversion by asking 
John what he thought of the English salmon (served 
with a wonderful Pistachio sauce) that he was en- 
gaged in eating. 

“ It beats the Murray perch, old man, doesn't it? ” 
he said. “ Here's to your return to the old country. 
Thomas, fill Mr. Morrisson's glass with champagne. 
And Miss Portia's too ! Emma, are you ready?” 

The toast was acknowledged by a shake of the 
hands on the part of the recipient with all the com- 
pany in turn. 

“ And now I'll propose the Little Wonder,” he said 
gravely ; “ and long may she prosper ! ” 

The “Little Wonder” thus caressingly alluded to 
was the huge silver mine twelve thousand miles 
away, which, night and day, in heat and smoke, and 
steam and turmoil, yielded up the ore that was 
moulded into the mighty ingots, that, in their turn, 
became metamorphosed into the shining coins, which. 


5 8 the PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 

to crown the sequence, filled the Kensington mansion 
with exotic trees and old masters, at the will and 
pleasure of its master. 

“I'll have to go and look after things a bit next 
year, I expect,” continued John, after the second 
toast had been duly drunk. “The manager's all 
right enough ; but there's no eye like the master’s.” 

“How'll that suit you, Portia, eh?” asked her 
brother, looking across at her with a smile, which 
was suddenly contracted by the unexpected falling 
out of his monocle. “She's dead nuts on London,” 
he added, addressing himself to John, as he picked it 
up and readjusted it methodically in his left eye. 
“It was getting about time you came to look after 
her, /tell you. Why, last night she was waltzing up 
to all hours. Emma couldn't drag her away ; and 
this morning she was off all by herself, if you'll be- 
lieve me, before anybody in the house was up. Come 
now, Miss, give us a full, true, unvarnished account 
of your proceedings since breakfast. Why, she's 
blushing — upon my soul, she’s blushing ! Things 
look promising for you, John. You'd better cross- 
examine her on the spot, if you'll take my advice.” 

“Why, you know where I went; and so does 
Emma,” protested Portia, feeling it impossible to be 
playful under her brother's inopportune badinage ; 
with the consciousness, too, that her cheeks were 
burning visibly, and that there was something more 
oppressive than ever in her lover's way of looking at 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 


59 

her. “I went to the Academy. I always said I 
would go some morning as soon as the doors were 
opened. ” 

“And you did gif her your gatalogue, Wilmer,” 
put in his wife, reproachfully, whether with the 
intention of coming to Portia’s rescue, or of remind- 
ing her husband that he had been aider and abettor in 
the transaction, was not clear. 

“So I did ; but I never thought she’d make use 
of it. ” 

“Well! and who did you meet? How many of 
your beaux of last night did you drop across ? ” 

“None,” said Portia, immensely relieved to be 
saved from the necessity of telling a lie — an accom- 
plishment in which she was miserably deficient ; 
“but I wonder why you selected those particular 
pictures you marked in the catalogue. I saw ever so 
many I liked much better.” 

The stratagem succeeded. She had carried the 
war into the enemy’s camp. Wilmer, who had been 
actuated by no other aim than that of making her feel 
as uncomfortable as possible, found it incumbent 
upon him now to defend his self-assumed claim to 
the character of art-critic without delay. 

“ What do you know about pictures ? There’s a 
lot of modern rubbish I wouldn’t give a sixpence for. 
The ones I marked had an old master touch about 
them that made them a little better than the rest ; but 
I wouldn’t have 'em in my collection at any price. 


60 THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 

Well take a turn through the gallery when lunch is 
over, if Johns agreeable.” 

“Just as you like,” assented John; “but I don't 
pretend to know anything about pictures. Living 
pictures are the only ones to my taste.” 

He looked at Portia as he said this, but encountered 
no responsive glance, and the conversation took a 
more general turn. Everyone had something to ask 
about John's experiences on his homeward voyage. 
Mrs. James, who was wielding a huge feather-fan 
of barbaric magnificence, was interested ta learn 
whether Mrs. So-and-so or Miss So-and-so had been 
considered the best-dressed woman on board. Portia 
wanted to know what John had thought of the 
earthly paradise of Ceylon, with its brilliant fringe of 
palm-trees standing like sentinels clad in green 
uniforms upon the surf-wreathed yellow coast. Also 
— and this was a melting reminiscence — whether he 
had seen among the little bronze-hued boys who 
dived under the ship at Aden, to the chorus of “a la 
mer”and “ ab a dibe,” the especial one whose leg 
had been bitten off by a shark. Wilmer asked to be 
informed as to the best day's run they had made, 
whether John had been lucky in the sweeps, and 
whether there had been much high play on board, 
When he had replied categorically to all these ques- 
tions the party adjourned to the conservatory, where 
Mrs. James selected a cabbage-tree palm as the most 
becoming background for her gown of peacock-blue, 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 6l 

and Wilmer offered his friend a cigar, with the remark, 
“and I'd just like to know what you think of it by- 
and-bye.” A footman, in blue and silver — Mrs. James 
would have had him bewigged and bepowdered as 
well, if she had only had carte blanche in the matter 
— brought in coffee and liqueurs (this custom had 
only been in vogue since the Jameses' return from the 
Continent), and while the men smoked and talked, 
and the words “coupons, shares, Little Wonder , min- 
ing-plant, lode, and pyrites," frequently recurring, 
made their conversation as unintelligible as it was 
uninteresting to their feminine hearers, Mrs. James 
leant back in her lounge of gilt wickerwork, against 
a gold-embroidered cushion, and Portia gave herself 
up to a day-dream under the shadow of a spreading 
fern-tree. From her seat she could see through the 
curtain-wreathed archway into the room they had 
just left, where the silver-blue footman was engaged 
in removing the dishes. Only yesterday she had 
taken an almost childish pleasure in the reflection 
that there were so many lovely things to look at now 
in her daily surroundings. Yesterday it would have 
been entertainment enough only to sit under the 
ferns, with a book upon her lap and the vista of the 
table, like a scene upon the stage, with its carpet of 
exquisite flowers, its fruit-laden dishes, and crystal 
glasses to meet her eyes w^hen she raised them 
abstractedly from the page. To-day her horizon 
seemed to be all dulled and contracted. Everyone 


62 THE PENANCE OP PORTIA JAMES . 

about her — John with his heated face, Wilmer with his 
still unfamiliar monocle, even poor, good Emma, in 
her peacock gown— no longer appeared the same. 
Life this morning, as she drove down Piccadilly in 
the dimly-looming fog, had seemed so full of won- 
drous possibilities. Now, it seemed to be all 
narrowed down to the prospect of perpetual imprison- 
ment in a gorgeous mansion such as this, with a 
husband in whom there was nothing to awaken the 
vague rapture that love and marriage, as she would 
fain have imagined them, should have inspired. 

“What do I want, after all? ” she reflected ; “and 
why has my world been out of joint since I came 
back from the Academy ? Can it be that my only 
objection to John is that he is not new enough for 
me ? Did I want marriage, if I had been free to 
marry, to mean some wonderful change that would 
have lifted me out of all my old associations ? And 
in what direction, and to what end ! Why should 
one always imagine there must be something in the 
unknown so infinitely beyond what we have within 
our reach ? ” 

It was a perplexing question, and one that has been 
turned over in thousands of brains many thousands 
of times, since the day when slowly-developing man 
evolved his first ideal. Portia was spared the neces- 
sity of seeking for a solution of it at the present 
moment (though it was sure to haunt her later) by a 
general move towards the picture-gallery, whither 


THE PENANCE OE PORTIA J AMES . 63 

her brother, triumphantly maintaining the monocle 
tightly screwed in his left eye, now led the way. 

A person professing to he a connoisseur, and find- 
ing himself in presence of an unknown collection of 
works of art, with no real knowledge to fall back 
upon, presents a pitiable spectacle enough. In the 
present instance, however, there was no exposure of 
the kind to be feared. In the first place, because 
Wilmer, in his naive and stupendous ignorance, was 
entirely of good faith, and took himself in even 
where he failed to take in others ; and in the second, 
because nobody in the party that now accompanied 
him cared a rush for his Claudes, or for the value 
that he might think fit to set upon them. John eyed 
with scant respect the dimensions of the gallery, 
lighted from above, and in the eighteen or twenty 
sombre paintings that lined its opposite walls saw 
nothing that called forth his interest or admiration. 

“But just wait till I show you this, old man ! ” 
Wilmer said enthusiastically, leading him up to an 
easel standing apart, upon which was displayed the 
coppery-skied Claude that Portia had so graphically 
but ungrammatically described to Harry. 

“ How's that for Hi ! eh ? ” 

. “ A landscape ? ” said John, dubiously, feeling that 
it was absolutely necessary he should say some- 
thing. 

“A landscape! why, what else would you take 
it for ? You wouldn't suppose I gave a cool " (here 


64 THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 

he whispered something in his partner's ear that made 
John lift his eyebrows high with surprise). “ I did, 
indeed ; and a wonderful bargain I consider it. Look 
at the colour in that sky ; look at the sunset glow on 
those branches ; look at the reflection in that water 
— just look at it, I say ! Some people wouldn't have 
known it for a Claude ; but I spotted it at once." 

“I suppose there are points about it," began John, 
doubtfully. 

‘ 4 Such bease ! " murmured Mrs. James, with em- 
phasis, after she had made an elaborate feint of 
examining it more closely. 

It's peaceful enough," assented John, catching 
at the phrase, 4 ‘if that's all you want in a picture ; 
but I'd look a long time at two. hundred and eighty 
pounds before I spent it on that." 

“There's the picture I dislike the least, ' r said Portia, 
and as she moved away towards what happened to 
be the only genuine Ruysdael in the collection, re- 
presenting the corner of a dark forest with a glade of 
surpassing softness in the foreground, John came up 
and stood by her side. 

“ I haven't got any eyes for pictures to-day," he 
said ; “ I've only one thing in my head, and I mean 
to say it straight out. Wilmer, here, and Mrs. James 
will be my witnesses. Will you, Portia James, put 
your hand in mine and say, ‘This day week, or this 
day fortnight, or this day month ' — not a day later 
than a month, though — ‘ I will take you, John Mor- 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 65 

risson, for my wedded husband.' Say it now,” he 
said eagerly, as his lips pressed themselves together 
in their accustomed tasting mould. “ Make her say 
it, Wilmer, here in your presence and Emma's ” — he 
had referred to his friend's wife by her Christian name 
in the pure agitation of the moment, or perhaps he 
was thinking of her only in her relation to her husband 
as his natural ally ; “it's been pretty rough upon me 
to have to wait for my happiness all these years. 
But you can't say I haven’t kept my word. There's 
our engagement ring on her finger,” — he continued, 
drawing Portia’s cold and unresisting hand into his 
own, and crushing it with unconscious force as he 
turned to Wilmer — “the new one.” 

Now, whether it was the difficulty of maintaining 
the monocle exactly in its proper place, or a result 
of the effort to look at the ring with the unoccupied 
and available eye in the meantime, it is impossible 
to say. But it is certain that the look which Portia 
directed at her brother, the mute appeal written in 
those speaking eyes of hers, was entirely lost upon 
him, otherwise this chapter of her life’s history might 
never have been written. As it was, there was nothing 
in the fact of John's having had recourse to him, to urge 
his betrothed to a speedy marriage, that struck Wilmer 
as being in the least extraordinary or irregular. 
Without the smallest doubt in his own mind that the 
match was all that was desirable for his sister, and 
quite convinced that she was entirely content with it 
5 


66 the PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 

herself, he thought he had noticed a tendency on her 
part to prolong her lover s time of probation beyond 
all reasonable limits. It must be remembered that 
though Portia was, in point of fact, a child at the 
time when she had dutifully promised to marry John 
Morriason, all the years that had elapsed since then 
were counted as years that he had accorded her 
magnanimously and generously. It was time that 
this state of things should come to an end. It was 
only, Wilmer reflected, in the days of the patriarchs 
that a man could afford to throw away seven-year 
periods of his life in dangling after one woman. As 
regarded his own marriage, he had come, and seen, 
and conquered the unresisting Emma all in five 
weeks. He therefore adjusted his monocle with a 
fine stage effect, and said, magisterially, “ Right you 
are, old man ! Now, Portia, my dear, there's been 
shilly-shallying and dilly-dallying enough. When 
are you going to let our friend John lead you to the 
altar? One week'' — he raised his hand as though 
he were conducting a sale, and brought it down with 
an imaginary auctioneer’s hammer between each 
pause — “two weeks, three weeks — going, going, 
three weeks — four weeks, going — what, not gone ? 
Oh, that'll never do ; four weeks, four weeks — going 
— five weeks — gone ! You made a sign — that meant 
gonel What! you didn’t know it? Nonsense — any- 
how it’s a settled matter. Come, Emma, kiss her — 
kiss them both, and leave them to settle the matter 
between themselves." 


CHAPTER VI. 


“Is Mrs. Morris at home? — and if so, will you 
give her my card, and ask her whether I may say a 
few words to her ? ” 

It was Harry Tolhurst who spoke, proffering his 
soft-voiced request to a woman with the hard exterior 
of a sixth-rate lodging-house-keeper, standing in an 
aggressive “What’s your business ? ” attitude just 
within the narrow entrance of a dingy-looking three- 
storey house in a by-street off Notting Hill. Harry 
looked more like the “ Chevalier de la Triste 
Figure” than ever; he wore a mourning-band round 
his tall hat, and carried a pair of black gloves in his 
hand. 

“ She's in,” the woman said, in nasally-suspicious 
tones, as she took the card he handed her, with a 
manner as ungracious as her accents. 

“Oh; then I'll wait inside a moment, if you’ll 
allow me,” he said courteously. 

It was necessary to take the initiative, for the 
woman had made a gesture as of shutting the half- 
opened house-door in his face. Now, however, she 
backed before him sullenly, and, opening the door 

67 


68 THE PEnARTCE OF PORTIA /AMES. 

of a musty room upon the corridor — of the flyblown- 
paper-flowers and bead-basket order — informed him 
grudgingly that she would carry his card " hupstairs.” 

He laid his hat and gloves upon the dusty table, 
and remained standing as he awaited Mrs. Morris's 
advent. The room was as repellent as its mistress ; 
the un dusted glazed leather arm-chair, with its anti- 
macassars in torn crochet-work slipping from the 
back and arms, seemed the most uninviting resting- 
place in the world. There was a green-gauze- 
enshrined, ill-looking mirror on the mantlepiece that, 
like the mirrors shipped off to remote colonial town- 
ships (where mechanical as well as moral failures 
are not unfrequently to be encountered), distorted all 
that it reflected. 

‘ 4 What pains people are at to make their lives 
ugly/' Harry thought within himself; it is "curious 
that man should be the most inartistic animal in 
existence ! There is a shaping of the means to the 
end in the construction of every other living creature 
that spins, or weaves, or builds itself a habitation, 
out of which harmony and beauty spring, as a 
matter of course. It is only human life that 
encumbers itself with hideous and useless super- 
fluities. ” 

It might be imagined from the tenor of the fore- 
going reflection that Harry’s mind was like that of 
the Psalmist, to wit, a "kingdom” wherein none 
but decorous subjects were given their liberty of 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 69 

action — or, in other words, that his reflections were 
always of a purely abstract or professional nature. 
This, however, was far from being the case, 
especially this morning, when he had so many 
closer interests to think of, that if the crude cheer- 
lessness of the room had not literally jumped, in 
French parlance, at his eyes, he would hardly have 
known whether he was standing there or in the 
equally cheerless passage outside. 

So many objects of interest, yet room for such an 
absorbing one besides ! Ever since he had led Portia 
from picture to picture in the rooms of Burlington 
House to take final and formal leave of her among 
the unheeding crowd in Piccadilly, her sweet eyes 
had intercepted themselves between himself and his 
work. Sometimes he thought of her as Undine, 
endowed with an embryonic soul, that was still 
awaiting the influence that was to transform it into a 
steadfast one. Sometimes as Una, walking in her 
virginal innocence through a world beset by beasts 
of prey in human guise. He was convinced that she 
was entirely sincere, intelligent, confiding, and joy- 
loving. What a mind hers would be to open ! 
From the little he had seen of her surroundings, he 
was sure that she must have been brought up in 
intellectual darkness, and doubtless, spiritual dark- 
ness too. Yet how easy it was to arouse her interest 
and sympathy in subjects that the majority of the 
women he talked to cared nothing about. Singularly 


70 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 


enough, as he owned to himself, Portia was in no 
wise his ideal. His ideal, whom he had never as yet 
found incarnate, was a dreamy-eyed woman of a 
mystic bias, heroic and. religious, and world-renounc- 
ing. That Portia should have taken such a hold 
upon his imagination, notwithstanding her complete 
divergence from this type, only seemed to him a 
stronger proof of the reality of the sentiment she had 
inspired in him, as the fact that nations continue to 
believe in revealed religions, despite the miracles 
and contradictions that must be accepted along with 
them, seems in the eyes of religious votaries a proof 
of the Heaven-inspired reality of the same. It was 
some three or four weeks now since that happy 
morning at the Academy when Harry had been 
rewarded for a week’s attente by having Portia to 
himself for a whole two hours for the first time since 
he had met her. He had haunted the Burlington 
House approaches vainly since ; had lost hours in 
the Park at the fashionable moments of the day ; had 
grudged the three days’ absence entailed by the 
funeral of a distant relative, who had left him a little 
sum of money ; and had finally invented a pretext 
for ringing at the door of the Kensington mansion, 
“ The family was in Paris,” the man had replied, 
“ but they were expected back shortly.” And Harry 
had actually found himself pondering uneasily upon 
the motives that could have taken Portia and her 
belongings to Paris in the full flush of the season, 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 


71 


when everybody with money is sure to be entertain- 
ing or being entertained, the first being often only a 
preliminary means of ensuring the second. There 
was, then, Portia’s absence to ponder over, and this 
was a subject that, latent or active, was seldom out 
of his mind ; and there was the immediate execution 
of some artistic work to undertake, which formed, 
indeed, the object of his visit to the dingy lodging- 
house this morning. Mrs. Morris was the only 
person who could help him in the latter respect, and 
he waited with some impatience for her to descend 
from the regions the landlady had designated as 
“ hupstairs.” 

The door was opened at last, and a young woman 
with a pale face and black hair, carrying a baby in 
her arms, came into the room. She had large dark 
eyes, that seemed to possess a naturally dramatic 
intensity of expression — or was it that some brood- 
ing care sate behind them ? — and her dress betokened 
an utter carelessness as to the impression she pro- 
duced upon her callers. It consisted of a collarless 
outdoor jacket, that looked as though it might have 
been costly and handsome before it had done duty 
for house and nursing attire, and a limp black skirt 
that dragged the floor all round her as she walked. 
The child upon her arm in no way resembled her. 
Its eyes w r ere of a curious thick shade of blue, that 
had an air of being never fully pierced by the light, 
and the bright auburn hair stuck out in scant locks 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 


7 * 

from the large head. Harry held out his hand to 
the mother as to an old acquaintance, and placed 
one of the shiny leather chairs in readiness for her. 
She accepted it with a murmured 4 ‘Thank you,” 
and seated herself listlessly, with the baby held 
against her breast 

“ I've had some trouble in finding you out,” 
Harry told her. “ I went to your old quarters first ; 
you don't seem to have gained by the change.” 

“ It's cheaper here,” she replied indifferently. 
“Well, Mr. Tolhurst, I said ‘No' last time you 
came, you remember ; but I'll say ‘ Yes ' now, if you 
want me.” 

“I do want you,” Harry replied; he could not 
refrain from a feeling of pity for the evident desola- 
tion he found her in. “I'll give you double what 
you had before, but I don’t want the baby this time.” 

“Not the baby ! ” Her face fell. “ I must bring 
him along anyhow. I couldn't come without him.” 

“Bring him by all means. There's a woman at 
the studio who'll look after him. I should like you to 
come to-morrow if you will, nine o'clock sharp ; 
and ” — he hesitated, as though in fear of offending 
her — “if you want a little advance, I wish you 
would tell me.” 

The kindly, cordial manner in which these words 
were uttered wrought an instant change in her face. 
Her mouth lost its weary, half-defiant expression, 
and trembled into pathetic curves, like that of a child 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 


73 


on the point of crying. The tears gathered slowly 
in her eyes, veiling the sad expression of strained 
expectation they had worn hitherto. She placed her 
hand hastily before them, while Harry said, in a 
voice of genuine pity : 

“ I wish you would let me help you. You would 
be doing me the greatest favor if you would. Are 
you in want of money ? Have you not heard lately 
from your husband? You were expecting him from 
America the last time I saw you. He hasn’t turned 
up, then, yet ? But he has written to you, I sup- 
pose ? ” 

“ No ! oh no ! not for ever so long ! ” The words 
were scarcely audible for the sobs — the uncontrollable 
outburst of some long pent-up grief — that shook her 
frame as she spoke. 

“And have you no friends here, none of his or 
yours, that can help you ? ” 

“Not one I could go to,” she said, with her 
handkerchief pressed to her face. She was weeping 
more quietly now. If the jilted hero of Locksley Hall 
declared, with some reason, that woman's emotions 
are less poignant than men's, he might have added 
that it was because, in the majority of cases, they 
know the relief of having “a good cry,” an outlet 
debarred, for the most part, to the sterner sex. 

“That is a pity,” Harry said gravely ; “but you 
mustn't lose heart so soon. If you want to earn 
money, I can find you plenty of work as a model. 


74 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 


The Madonna was the best advertisement you could 
have. Meanwhile, you should move out of these 
wretched rooms. I will give you the address of some 
better ones to-morrow — not too dear ; and then we 
must have proper inquiries made about your husband. 
I suppose you have written always ?” 

“Written, and written, and written,” she said de- 
spairingly. “ What’s the use if he doesn’t choose to 
answer ? ” 

A vengeful look flashed across her face ; a look 
that would have better befitted the outraged Queen 
Athalie than the wistful-eyed Madonna in the Acad- 
emy. Harry noticed it, and said softly : 

“If I am to help you, Mrs. Morris, I think you 
should trust me altogether. It is very painful for you 
to speak about, I know ; but I don’t see how we can 
set to work till we know what ground we are treading 
on. Have you any reason to think your husband 
has deserted you ? ” 

He said it gently, but firmly, looking down upon 
her compassionately as he spoke. 

“ I haven’t any reason,” she said despondently; 
“but I do think so sometimes, all the same.” 

Her eyes, still moist with tears, were looking up 
into his as though they were pleading for reassurance 
against her own worst terrors. Harry could see now 
how grief had worn and lined her face in the past few 
weeks. It was a young face, hardly more than a 
girl’s ; but motherhood and heartbreak had set their 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 75 

seal upon it, and the girl’s look could never more re- 
turn into it. The dark, almost Oriental eyes and 
clear pallor of the skin had been the special qualities 
that had made Harry seek her out as a model for her 
study of the Madonna and Child as she stood in the 
midst of a crowd, waiting for an omnibus at Oxford 
Circus. The vehicles seemed to fill in rapid succes- 
sion, and each time she made an attempt to push her 
way forward, with her infant in her arms, he had seen 
her pushed back by some rudely elbowing aspirant. 
He had stood watching the scene for a few moments 
before he came to her assistance. It was difficult to 
say to what class she belonged. The face was un- 
deniably handsome, the features, regular and well- 
formed ; yet the subtle, indefinable suggestion 
conveyed in the lines of the mouth was rather of 
Bank Holiday than of Lady’s Mile associations. 
The figure was youthful and of middle height ; the 
dress — an artist, accustomed to study hues and tex- 
tures almost daily, is undesignedly an appraiser of 
dress — was rich in material, and well-made, but bore 
the appearance of having been lived and travelled 
and slept in. Harry had taken in all these details 
before coming to her aid. As the next Bayswater 
omnibus rolled up, the evening being a rarely beau- 
tiful one, such as a capricious clerk of the weather 
will sometimes ordain in the middle of February, he 
helped her to mount upon the top, and, with his 
Madonna still in his mind, seated himself beside her 


76 THE PENANCE OF P0RT1 A JAMES. 

upon a double seat in front that they had all to them- 
selves. 

He did not know Portia in those days, but he was 
not moved by any other motive than a professional 
one in his accosting the young woman he had just 
encountered. He spoke to her as it is allowable to 
speak to a neighbour on the top of a 'bus. (What a 
curious record some of these fragmentary conversa- 
tions would make, to be sure ! What transient 
sympathies* that never have scope to ripen, they 
might betray ! What first-chapters of three-volume 
popular novels they might furnish !) He asked her 
where she wished to be set down, and discovered by 
a curious coincidence that it was in the self-same 
spot as himself; looked with interest at her sleeping 
baby, and addressed her the familiar questions that 
chance acquaintances on an omnibus will also 
occasionally ask each other : questions that he felt 
intuitively would not be resented by her, though he 
would have hesitated to frame them in most cases. 
“Was that her own baby?" and “Did she live in 
London?" and “Was her husband with her?" and 
ainsi de suite. 

He did not ask these questions categorically ; they 
found their raison d'etre after the prescribed remarks 
had been “passed" — as Mrs. Morris herself would 
have called it, according to omnibus etiquette — ^be- 
tween her and himself. The fineness of the evening, 


THE PENANCE OE PORTIA J AMES . 


77 


the astonishing mildness of the atmosphere for 
February, the redness of the sunset, the probability of 
a change on the morrow, the snowstorm of the pre- 
ceding Sunday — all the old stock-subjects received 
their full and rightful share of consideration before 
more intimate topics were discussed. Harry found 
that his companion's voice corresponded to the Bank 
Holiday contour of her mouth. But if the intonation 
did not speak of Newnham or Girton, the timbre was 
pleasant and unaffected. He learned that she had 
been to boarding-school at Brixton, but had travelled 
much since. She had been to Australia, and had 
stopped at the Cape on her way, and now she had 
just come from America, whence she was daily ex- 
pecting her husband to join her. She had come in 
advance to see an old aunt in Clapham, who had 
brought her up, and who had telegraphed for her ; 
but when she reached England she learned that the 
aunt had died, and now she found herself all alone 
in London with her child. 

And then Harry had returned the confidence by 
telling her, in his soft, refined voice, as much as it 
was necessary that she should know about himself, 
before leading up to the question he had it in his mind 
to ask her. He explained that he painted pictures 
for his living, and that it was very hard work, but 
that it was the only work he cared about doing. He 
entered into the difficulty of finding faces to paint that 


78 THE PENANCE OF PORTIA J AMES . 

corresponded to the ideas ( ‘ ‘ ideals ” he abstained from 
saying, lest she should fail to understand him) that 
he had in his mind, and told her how much he had 
been struck by the fitness of her face for the study of 
a Madonna he was contemplating. She had looked 
half-pleased and half-frightened, and had said, “ Oh 
my ! what, me a Madonna ! Go away with you ! ” 
But he had insisted, and had assured her that he 
would be more grateful than he could say if she 
would let him put her into his picture, and her baby 
too ; adding that if she liked to earn a little extra 
money to spend, the obligation of sitting still with her 
child on her lap for eighteenpence an hour was a 
comparatively easy way of doing so. “ And you’ll 
put him in the picture, too ? ” she had asked, raising 
the child to her face and covering him with kisses. 
“ That’s what I think the most of.” 

“ Of course ; why, we couldn’t do without him. 
Let me look at his face, will you, a moment ? ” 

She turned it round to him with all a mother’s 
pride, pushing the cap back from the baby’s forehead 
with eager fingers. Harry gazed curiously into the 
small face, which Time’s fingers had not as yet shaped 
into any definite mould. “ He isn’t like you,” he 
said, in an unconsciously regretful tone. 

“ No ; he takes after his father.” It was impossible 
to say whether she was glad or grieved at the resem- 
blance. 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 79 

“ He has fine eyes, though/' said Harry ; he could 
see that she was greedy of admiration for her first- 
born ; “ are they like his fathers too ? ” 

“ The very image of them/' with a sigh ; “ and 
you should see how he twists them about when he's 
looking after me. It's that pitiful, as if he was say- 
ing, ‘ What 'ud become of me without my mother, 
I'd like to know ? '" 

Harry remembered that his inspection of the baby 
on this occasion had led to his treating his subject in 
a more novel and unconventional way than he had 
originally intended. People were beginning now to 
speak of his picture ; his rendering of the eyes of the 
Infant, especially were made an occasion for the ex- 
ercise of polemics in the art, and would-be art, world, 
that had brought it into prompt notice. Some critics 
saw in these eyes only the mechanical mediums for 
the transmission of light without comprehension that 
the great French painter Deschamps sets in the heads 
of his realistic infants of a tender age. Others de- 
clared that what the former critics called a vacant 
gaze was in reality an expression charged with a 
mystic significance, and that “ illimitable possibili- 
ties " lay behind the somewhat opaque blue orbs with 
the glareous whites. Two camps were formed, and 
the Daily Telegraph made a fresh harvest out of letters 
headed “Modern Treatment of Religious Subjects," 
to which Mrs. Nicklebys innumerable contributed. 


go THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 

The picture had been begun in February, and Harry 
had worked at it unceasingly until it was sufficiently 
advanced to be sent to the Academy, under the ap- 
pellation of “ A Study for the Virgin and Child. ” He 
had not exchanged much conversation with his model, 
being loth to lose the benefit of an abstracted, half- 
wisful expression that she wore when she was silent. 
He thought of all these things now, as she looked up 
towards him for help and counsel. Perhaps, if the 
vision of Portia had not been so ever-present in his 
mind, it would have been hard to resist answering 
the appeal by one of those demonstrations of sym- 
pathy that a man is so prompted to make when a 
young and pretty woman seeks consolation at his 
hands. But, besides the fact that he cherished Por- 
tia's image so closely, Harry had strongly-rooted 
principles as regarded the treatment of his models. 
He therefore replied to the glance by the formal 
words, “I assure you, my dear Mrs. Morris, lam 
most anxious to do everything in my power to help 
you. At nine o'clock to-morrow, then — and I shall 
hope to be able to advise you about your course 
then. I have an appointment to keep now ; but if 
you will think over the matter to-day, and tell me as 
much of your case as may be necessary to enable 
me to help you, I will see what can be done, I pro- 
mise you ; " and without waiting for her to thank 
him he departed 


CHAPTER VII. 


Portia's wedding-day was fast approaching. The 
last free Wednesday had come and gone, and now 
she was clinging to the last Thursday in the week 
that she might still call her own. Although the 
whole party had made a hurried visit to Paris, where 
alone, from Mrs. James's point of view, “a going- 
away bonnet " worthy of the occasion could be found ; 
and though the chestnut filly had arrived from Ply- 
mouth and had proved herself all and more than a 
daughter of the winner of the Oaks might be expected 
to be, there were yet unnumbered hours in the day — 
hours that recurred in the dead watches of the night — 
when our heroine pondered distractedly over the 
coming great change in her life. “How I wish, " 
she would think to herself at these times, “ I had 
done like those Trappists we saw in the south of 
France, who say to each other over and over again, 

4 Brother, think of Death.' If I had only kept saying 
to myself, ‘ It's no use, I've got to be married — It's 
no use, I’ve got to be married,' I suppose it would 

81 


82 The PENANCE OF PORTIA /AMES. 

have seemed as easy and natural to go to the altar 
when the time came, as it must seem to them to sink 
into the grave that they have been digging for them- 
selves for so long. But I have always put away the 
thought of the inevitable. It seemed so far off — as 
far as to be grown-up seems when one is a child ; 
and now the time has really come, and I don't feel 
more ready to meet my fate than if the marriage had 
been only this minute arranged." 

If Portia, however, was in no bridal frame of mind, 
the same cannot be said of John. If he could have 
reversed the Joshuan miracle, and sent the sun cours- 
ing round the heavens, in accordance with Israelitish 
cosmogony, in double-quick time, he would certainly 
have done so during the weeks that intervened be- 
tween his arrival in London and his wedding-day. 
There were moments when Portia felt an inexplicable 
physical shrinking in his presence, as though he were 
literally hungering to devour her bodily, and were 
whetting his lips in anticipation of the feast. She 
would entreat the good-natured Emma to accompany 
her whenever she went out with him, though her 
sister-in-law was not particularly well fitted either 
actually or metaphorically for playing the part of 
bodkin ; and had she been brought up upon the sys- 
tem of the typical convent-bred jeune fille, instead of 
upon that of an Australian bush maiden who had 
been allowed to run wild during the greater portion 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA /AMES. 83 

of her life, she could not have maintained a more 
demure demeanour when she found herself for a few 
instants alone with him. She felt herself indeed at 
these times not unlike Andersen's Ice-maiden. But 
John had ardency enough to melt the snows on the 
frosty Caucasus itself. The best means she could 
find for leading him away from the topic of his all- 
absorbing love for her, was to talk about their future 
plans. They were to return to London after a tour 
in Norway, where Portia, to whom even English 
twilights were a matter of constant surprise and 
delight, was to behold a sun-illumined night. After 
which they were to instal themselves temporarily in 
a private apartment at a West-End hotel. John de- 
clared that once they were married he would never 
let her out of his sight. “ I'll stick to you like your 
shadow, my darling," he said ; “ there'll never have 
been such spoons in this world as you and me." 

Portia on these occasions would maintain a dead 
silence. Sometimes, like a slowly-fading picture in 
a dissolving view, a dim presentment of Harry's 
Madonna and Child would shape itself before her 
gaze as she listened. But the impression was grow- 
ing fainter and fainter, and the unaccountable dread 
of renewing it prevented her from going to the Acad- 
emy to see the actual picture again. 

Never, in the course of her eighteen years of think- 
ing life — for before the age of three the impressions 


84 


THE PENANCE OP PORTIA JAMES . 


upon a child’s mind efface each other like the scrolls 
on a palimpsest — never had Portia felt so awfully 
alone as during the few weeks that preceded her 
wedding-day. With brother, sister, and lover all 
trying to heap fresh proofs of their tenderness upon 
her ; with newly-made friends running in and out 
daily with a thousand offers of service and sympathy, 
she had a sensation of completest isolation. There 
was no one to whom she could speak of what she 
really felt, no one to whom she could turn for re- 
assurance against her own forebodings. Never had 
she such a full understanding of the truth that money 
cannot buy peace of mind. As she drove from shop 
to shop with her sister and her betrothed, to inspect 
the dainty adornments they deemed necessary for 
her, it seemed to her that she was only buying the 
chains with which she would be loaded on her mar- 
riage-day. “ Why cannot I speak out? ” she would 
ask herself despairingly, as she lay reviewing her 
position in feverish unrest in the night-time. “ Here 
I am, in the midst of the people who profess to be 
the fondest of me in the world, and I cannot say to 
them — and to John first of all — ‘Only show your 
love by making a little sacrifice. Give me just a 
little more time to get used to you/" 

But when the morning came, her courage would 
fail her afresh. How could she find it in her heart 
to hurl such a bombshell into the midst of all their 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 85 

pleasant anticipations ! Moreover, if it was simply 
a matter of getting used to John, would not the 
wisest way of achieving it be to let him marry her at 
the appointed time ! In one sense she had been 
more used to him years ago than she was now, so 
that the probability of her accustoming herself in the 
way she desired, seemed to be in inverse ratio to the 
time she was given to do it in. Curiously enough 
she had felt used to Harry within two minutes of her 
meeting him in front of the closed Academy doors. 
How could one account for such perplexing contra- 
dictions ! And how, above all, could one help feel- 
ing as one did ! 

There was one friend, and one only, to whom 
Portia felt she could have made plenary confession 
at this time ; but that was a friend who was not at 
present within her reach. Upon the journey home 
in the P. and O. boat Ismail , a lady returning from 
Egypt had joined the steamer at Port Said, whom 
Portia had felt at once to be unlike anybody she had 
seen before. Mrs. James had not been pleasantly 
impressed by her. “ Achl she would topsy-turvy 
us all," she said; “she has no gommon-sense ! ” 
But certain people, and Portia among them, believed 
that she was endowed with ^common sense, and 
of such an exceptional kind, that the most ordinary 
matters in the world seemed to show themselves 
under a novel and interesting aspect in her company. 


86 THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 

Instead of looking at things through everybody else’s 
glasses, she looked at them through her own — Anna 
Ross's — glasses ; and though the view inclined her, no 
doubt to adopt the benevolently ironical standpoint 
that Renan declares to be the only one compatible 
with philosophy and culture, she did not adopt it 
outwardly or aggressively, but kept it for herself 
and a few of the initiated. She had taken a liking to 
Portia — such as solitary women with male brains 
will sometimes take for a charming young girl who 
has a naive and unbounded, withal a timid admiration 
for them — had made her sit with heron the forecastle 
when she chose to retreat thither for a quiet smoke 
upon sleepy afternoons in the Mediterranean, and 
had listened with a half-smiling, half sphinx-like 
demeanour to the young girl's tales of her life in the 
Australian bush, as one would listen to the prattle of 
a favourite child. She had made Portia promise to 
write to her from time to time, and the latter had 
done so at least once in two months since they had 
parted at Plymouth. The address that had been 
given her was that of a street in Paris where Anna 
had her atelier, and where she received com- 
munications addressed indifferently to “ Monsieur " 
or * 4 Mademoiselle Ross, artiste-peintre." Portia had 
tried to see her friend during her hurried visit to 
Paris, but Miss Ross was out of town. She had 
therefore been fain to content herself by leaving a 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 87 

short letter for her, in which she informed Anna of 
her approaching marriage. To this communication 
she had received no answer, and the longing to 
write again, and to se repandre in the true significance 
of the word, in a letter that none but Anna could 
read, was checked by the fear that it would not 
arrive at its destination. Meanwhile, the days 
went relentlessly by, until the fatal morning arrived. 
It is a mistake to suppose that the time which seems 
to pass the most quickly is invariably that which is 
occupied by the most agreeable sensations. To 
Portia her last week of grace seemed to travel with 
the swiftness of a gathering storm ; and, by way of 
intensifying the morbid tension of mind from which 
she was suffering, she chose for her nightly reading 
that most appalling psychological study of Hugo's, 
called Le dernier jour dun condamne. She felt in 
every nerve and fibre each line of the hideous 
narrative, and the opening phrase of one of the con- 
cluding chapters, “Eh bien done, ayons courage 
avec la mort. Prenons cette horrible idee & deux 
mains, et considerons-la en face. Demandons-lui 
compte de ce qu'elle est, &c.,” seemed, by the 
substitution of the words “ mon sort ” for “la mort," 
to meet her case so exactly, that the altar would 
assume in her imagination the very shape and sub- 
stance of the sinister machine on the Place de Greve, 
with “lesdeux bras rouges avec leur triangle noir 


88 the PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 

au bout/' Small wonder if, when the morning of 
the wedding-day actually arrived, her heart failed 
her, and she would fain have begged once more for 
a reprieve. 

But the time for reprieves was past. If she had 
been actually in the hands of the gendarmes, who laid 
pitiless hands upon Victor Hugos condemned man 
as he grovelled in the last abasement of sick terror at 
the commissaire’s feet, she could not have felt more 
powerless to free herself. The gendarmes, in her 
case, were represented by Emma and her brother 
and her friends (the clergyman who was to perform 
the ceremony might take the place of the bourreau ), 
all of whom had her in their grasp to-day. She had 
felt hitherto as though a door of escape might still be 
opened to her on the last morning ; but now she 
knew, as the condemned man in the cart had known, 
that the thing that loomed before her was the Reality . 

They were hardly suitable reflections these for the 
typical bride whom the sun shines on — and the sun 
did shine on this late July morning, with the veiled 
intensity that only a London sun can manifest upon 
occasion. Portia sat by the open window with a 
loose wrap thrown over her shoulders, a cataract of 
descending hair falling below her hips. The pallor 
that her night-watches had set upon her cheeks was 
visible in the morning light ; but to a face so fair as 
hers, with youth and health painted on the lips and 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 89 

sparkling in the eyes, paleness is not an unbecoming 
attribute. She was tired of thinking now. The less 
she thought, she told herself, the better. She laid 
her head down upon her hands, resting them in their 
turn on the window-sill, while a line in The Light of 
Asia that Anna had given her to read, “Who shall 
shut out Fate ? ” recurred to her mind. Her fate was 
lying in waiting for her outside this peaceful room, 
with the rose-bed in the garden that she had grown 
so fond of. It would be upon her in another moment, 
and even while she was pondering she heard a sudden 
knock at the door. 

She started. It was as though she had herself 
summoned her destiny. “Come in,” she said 
tremblingly ; but it was only the maid, who brought 
her a letter that had come by the first post. Portia 
took it listlessly into her hands. The writing — a 
queer, cramped, lopsided writing enough— was 
familiar to her as Anna Ross's. “At last ! ” she said, 
as, dismissing the maid, she shook back her cloudy 
mantle of hair, and set herself to discover what her 
friend had to say to her about the great event 
impending. As she read, the listlessness disap- 
peared, and a strange, eager look gathered in her 
eyes. What Anna had written was as follows : 

“ You don’t expect me, my dear little girl, to add 
banal congratulations to those that have doubtless 
been heaped upon you already. What concerns me 


90 THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 

solely in the news you have given me is, how far 
your immediate happiness may be affected by it. Of 
your future happiness, despite what silly people may 
tell you to the contrary, you can know nothing, nor 
I either; but the readjustment of your actual life in 
the way you propose must affect it at the present 
moment for weal or for woe, and I am anxious be- 
yond expression to hear that it is for weal. One 
man's meat is, as you know, another man’s poison. 
From my own point of view, marriage, as it is at 
present understood, is the most foolish and suicidal 
step a woman can take. Why should we bind our- 
selves to belie for the remainder of our natural lives 
our real natures, our real selves, as expressed in the 
new instincts, promptings, or desires we may feel ? 
Why, in short, should the union of a man and 
woman, which is meaningless and worth nothing 
without mutual inclination, be made the occasion of 
vows and oaths, and so-called binding ceremonies, 
which are not binding at all when the inclination is 
gone ? The entire system upon which marriage is 
based is an outrage to common sense. It is one of 
the few contracts that must necessarily be entered 
into in the dark, and, at the same time, the one of all 
others that it is the hardest to cancel. If, at least, 
the law which regulated marriage had allowed for the 
laws which govern our being, and had made of it an 
engagement of a specified duration renewable at 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 91 

pleasure, there might be something to be said in 
mitigation of it. As it stands at present, I hold it in 
abhorrence, as one of the cumbersome contrivances 
by which man, who has systematized war and rapine, 
and oppression and persecution, has further bur- 
dened our existence upon earth ; and I always feel 
more prompted to send a cypress branch than an 
orange wreath to an expectant bride. 

“But this ‘sortie/ dear child, must not discom- 
pose you. Though you do not tell me so, it can be 
for no other reason than the one that you love John 
Morrisson — at least, in the present — that you are 
going to be married to him. Therefore, I hope you 
may be as happy as you would be were you spared the 
marriage ceremony altogether. You are full young 
(you look so, at least) to forfeit your liberty. Perhaps 
you will be shocked when I tell you I think every 
woman should see something of life before settling 
down, if to settle down at all is consistent with her 
nature. You have not had that advantage ; and, see- 
ing that at twenty-one you are legally your own mis- 
tress, it is a pity you did not give yourself time to 
come and take up your quarters here with me for a 
space, where you could have looked into the heart 
of things a little more than you have been accustomed 
to do hitherto. Remember this, anyhow. If now, 
or at any other time, you need a refuge, a place 
where you will be absolutely free to think, to say, to 


92 THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 

do whatever you please and how you please — to live, 
in fact, your own life, just as your instincts may lead 
you — come to me. You will find my arms, my 
hearth, and my home — such as it is — open to you. 
It is not even necessary to write beforehand. I 
have given your name to the concierge , who has 
orders to deliver you the key of my studio at any 
time you may appear upon the scene (I keep no 
servant). Tell me when you expect to be married, 
and whether I cannot persuade you to come to me 
beforehand. ” 

Portia read this letter twice. The effort of decipher- 
ing Anna’s handwriting seemed to drive the mean- 
ing home. It was a letter as unsuitable to the oc- 
casion as her own thoughts had been, and for this 
reason it appealed strongly to her sympathies. The 
arguments against marriage, which are familiar to 
most people who have read the pour and the contre 
as set forth by Mrs. Lynn Linton on the one hand, 
and Mrs. Mona Caird on the other, were all new and 
startling to her. In her present frame of mind, they 
seemed to bear a wonderful stamp of truth as well. 
How such a letter would have affected her if it had 
been Harry Tolhurst, or someone with the self-same 
eyes and voice, to whom she was expected to 
swear love and allegiance that morning, she did not 
stop to ask herself. She went to her writing-table, 
the Wouvermans table, which Wilmer had caused 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 93 

to be stocked with every imaginable adjunct 
and extracted therefrom a telegram form, upon 
which she scribbled the words : “ Thanks ; but too 
late. Must be married this morning. — Portia/' and 
addressing it to Miss Ross, 317 Rue de Vaugirard, 
rang the bell and requested that it should be carried 
forthwith to the nearest telegraph office. To Emma, 
who came in a few moments later, clad in a dress- 
ing-gown of pale green satin, shrouded in diapho- 
nous lace, and who melted into “ Achsl” and “Gott- 
lobs!” innumerable over the Braut, she made no 
mention of her letter. Was it in obedience to some 
mysterious presentiment that she had never even re- 
vealed Anna's whereabouts to her relatives either, 
the fact remains that as soon as she was alone, after 
reading the communication a third time and thus 
entirely mastering its meaning, she struck a match, 
and holding the letter to the flame watched it con- 
sume slowly in the open grate into which she had 
thrown it, until it had curled into black shreds. Her 
last hope of succour, at the eleventh hour, died out of 
her heart; the door of escape had remained closed, 
and she prepared, as the history- books tell us of 
queenly victims upon the scaffold, to meet her fate 
with resignation and fortitude. 


CHAPTER VIII. 


Who that has ever watched a group of nursery-maids 
and errand-boys assembled in the neighbourhood of 
a house with a striped awning, where a wedding is 
impending, can deny imagination to the poorer 
classes ? Well might one put the question to them, 

4 4 What went ye out for to see ? ” since the reward of 
their long and patient dawdling on the pavement is 
often little more than a transient glimpse of a lace- 
or cashmere-enveloped figure, which, for all they can 
really see of it, might equally well represent a 
Mussulman lady (I wonder why a Mussul woman is 
never heard of ?) wrapped in her disguising 44 feredje,” 
as an English bride. Among the scenes of London 
life in the season that Tissot has painted so well, a 
fashionable wedding, looked at from the point of 
view of the crowd outside, might form an amusing 
and characteristic subject. The picture should be 
made to represent the covered awning, bright with 
buff and scarlet stripes, which, while it conceals 
everything worth seeing from the beholder, presents 
nevertheless such an irresistible attraction to the 


95 


THE PENANCE OP PORTIA JAMES . 

loiterers on the pavement. As regards their own 
share in the show, it is certainly a case in which a 
very little is made to go a very long way — as little, 
maybe, as a fleeting view of the bride’s silk-encased 
ankles as she mounts quickly into the carriage, or of 
the exterior surface of her bridal bouquet after she is 
seated inside. But as imagination, as Shakespeare 
has told us, “bodies forth the form of things un- 
known,” even such vague indications as those con- 
veyed by the ankles and the bouquet send the nursery- 
maids and errand-boys on their way rejoicing; and 
to have their imaginations stimulated in the same 
direction they will lie in wait for the next wedding- 
party with equal pertinacity, and be as thankful as 
ever for the same small mercies as those that have 
just fallen to their share. 

In the bridal party which left the door of the Ken- 
sington mansion on Portia’s wedding-day, there was 
nothing, however, to appeal to the imagination of 
passing nursemaids and errand-boys. There was no 
awning, which serves on these occasions as a rally- 
ing-flag for the crowd ; there were no favours ; and 
there was no throwing of rice or flinging of white- 
satin slippers. Having obtained the one great con- 
cession he had pleaded for, John had yielded upon 
every other point to the wishes of his bride. Indeed, 
he showed almost as great a desire to have the mar- 
riage ceremony conducted quietly and privately as 


96 THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 

herself. Though she had been obliged to give way 
as regarded the “ going-away bonnet/' Portia had 
remained firm upon other points. There was noth- 
ing to betray the bride in her appearance as she 
came down stairs on her wedding morning arrayed 
in just the same clothes as she might have worn to 
drive into Regent Street on a round of morning shop- 
ping. The tailor-made frock was packed away. 
There were associations bound up with it that would 
make it hard for her to wear it again for many a long 
day. But her bridal array was none the less as de- 
mure in its way as the far-famed Jenny Wren's, upon 
the memorable occasion when she promised Cock 
Robin to “ always wear her brown gown, and never 
dress too fine." It was in one of those indefinable 
hues that French artistes call feuille morte — a hue 
that may embrace a chromatic scale of colour rang- 
ing from vivid scarlet to palest gold, if the term be 
literally applied, but which, from the tailleuse stand- 
point signifies a shade as near the one preferred by 
the modest Jenny as possible. In this soft, dead- 
leafsetting, which brought into relief the warm tints 
in her hair and eyes (when you looked into them 
closely, Portia's eyes were not unlike a certain vari- 
ety of jasper), with her pale cheeks, and the red line 
of her half parted lips, the bride looked pretty enough. 
She 'possessed one of those entirely supple figures 
which no dressmaker’s craft can simulate, and even the 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES, . 97 

conventionally made gown went into unexpectedly 
classic curves upon it. 

Mrs. James, meanwhile, did not fall short in her 
self-adopted role of unconscious foil upon the occasion. 
Dead-leaf or dead anything else was not for her at her 
sister-in-law’s wedding. She had never been an up- 
holder of the self-effacing theory in any of its appli- 
cations. Her gown was distinctly of the voyant order, 
and, what was more, she meant it to be so. There 
is an even stronger adjective than voyant in the word 
criard , which implies an association of ideas in dress 
that the English may feel, but which they have never 
been able to put into words. Mrs. James’s dress 
was both voyant and criard, and to carry out the 
French train of comparisons, the colors swore as well. 
She wore a bonnet wreathed with apple-blossoms 
that would have been an exquisite work of art any- 
where removed from the immediate neighbourhood 
of her head ; a vis it e crusted with coruscating beads 
that flashed parti-coloured rays around her as she 
walked ; and a train of sapphire velvet with salmon- 
coloured satin trimmings, that had been originally 
made, against her own better judgment, by a thea- 
trical faiseuse in Paris as a theatre or dinner-dress. 
Thus attired, and carrying quite gratuitously a terra- 
cotta parasol with lace flounces, Emma mounted 
with her sister-in-law into the closed brougham which 
was to drive them to Kensington Church hard by. 
7 


98 the PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 

Very little was said on the way. Mrs. James found 
frequent occasion to apply a gold-topped scent-bottle 
to her nostrils, and to offer the same to her compan- 
on, sitting, “ like rare pale Marguerite,” in abstracted, 
silence by her side. Of the two, her emotion, 
was, perhaps, at this moment the keenest. Portia had 
fought her battle. She had been fighting it night and 
day for weeks past. There were scars left behind, 
of which the pain might be divined by a certain set 
look in the eyes, as well as by the compressed lines 
around her red lips. But this morning she had capit- 
ulated ; she had laid down her arms once and forever. 
Perhaps, after all, there was a certain sense of relief 
in knowing that the struggle was at an end ; such a 
relief as the vanquished may feel, perchance, when 
they open the gates they have defended so long and 
so wearily to the beleaguering enemy. Whatever 
might betide, she must make the best of it now. And 
how many women there are, after all, she reflected, 
who go through life, and get a good deal of happi- 
ness out of it too, without any share in the thing we 
call Love. Perhaps there was only a fixed quantity 
of it in the universe, as there is of health and prosper- 
ity and other good things, and it fell to the lot of 
none but the favoured few to enjoy it. At any rate, it 
was a thing one could do without. 

Farther in her reflections Portia was unable to go, 
for the brougham had drawn up before the church 


THE PENANCE OP PORTIA JAMES. 99 

door, and Wilmer, in a frock-coat and white waist- 
coat (he had as nearly as possible slung his racing- 
glasses across it), his left eye screwed up painfully 
behind his eyeglass, was waiting to assist them to 
descend. And now John came out to meet them from 
the porch, and seized a hand of each. His thick red 
beard had been cut and trimmed in Renaissance 
fashion, and he looked more like a jovial Henri de 
Navarre or Henry VIII. than ever. The impalpable 
substance he was tasting must have had more relish 
than ever this morning, for to Portia it seemed that 
his lips worked unceasingly. “ I must break him of 
that habit when we are married/' she thought ; and 
this, it is to be feared, was the reflection that was 
uppermost in her mind as she walked up the nave 
by his side. Of order in the wedding party there was 
none. The little group of four stood before the altar 
in a line, so that in the eyes of an indifferent observer 
they might have been undergoing marriage indis- 
criminately, and Wilmer had to be twice reminded 
that it was his duty to give away “ this woman," 
under which designation he had somehow never 
thought of his sister. The only person who, mindful 
of etiquette, wept in her handkerchief was Emma, 
and even this was done in an obviously perfunctory 
manner. The clergyman, who had been bidden to 
the feast that was to precede the departure of the 
wedded pair, fixed to take place at five the same after- 


IOO 


THE PEHANCE OP PORTIA JAMES. 


noon, walked home with Mr. James. Emma had 
insisted upon abandoning the brougham to Mr. and 
Mrs. Morrisson, and had driven off in serene and un- 
witnessed triumph in a hansom. Thus it was that 
Portia found herself for a few minutes alone with her 
husband as they drove back to the house. Her 
husband ! This big, red-bearded man with whom 
she had just walked down the nave — her husband ! 
The idea was so unnatural that it seemed almost 
grotesque. Never had she felt him so complete a 
stranger to her as at this moment. Far more of a 
stranger, indeed, than when the only tie that had 
bound her to him was that of a close and early 
friendship. She wondered now whether she could 
have been under the vague impression that the 
fact of standing before the altar and repeating the 
formula set forth in a particular part of her prayer- 
book, must of necessity operate an immediate mir- 
acle, and inspire her with wifely sentiment for him. 
If she had been under any such illusion it vanished 
now, as John took his seat by her side in his newly 
assumed character of her legal lord and master. And 
by her side he would be “ to-morrow, and to-mor- 
row, and to-morrow/' and so on through all the mor- 
rows to come, “to the last syllable of recorded time.” 
Day and night he would be by her side, and she — 
God forgive her ! — would have asked no greater 
boon of Heaven than to see him depart upon his 
wedding journey alone. 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA /AMES. 


IOI 


Another fatal discovery she made during this home- 
ward drive was that the more loudly John proclaimed 
his happiness, the less she felt inclined to share in it 
herself. To have to sympathise with him for loving 
her, when it seemed so impossible to love him in 
return, was a hard task. It was like being called 
upon to act in real earnest the unsatisfactory part 
of the guest at the Barmecide’s Feast, who, while 
seated before an empty board, is constrained to 
praise the exquisite flavours of the imaginary dishes 
his host continues to press upon him. And with 
what genuine conviction John played the part of 
the host ! How terribly in earnest he was ! How 
completely he believed that what to her was Dead 
Sea fruit was, in point of fact, real nectar and am- 
brosia ! What royal dishes, served up at what a never- 
ending Agapemone, he seemed to behold ; while, to 
her, the table was bare indeed, and the prospect little 
better than one of slow starvation ! He had taken 
her hand — the ungloved one, upon which the first 
fetter, in the shape of the broad wedding-ring, had 
just been placed — almost as soon as he entered 
the carriage, and was placing it close over his heart. 

“ Just feel how it beats, deary/’ he said ; “I never 
thought of you, Portia, through all the years I’ve loved 
you, but it used to beat like that. It used to beat 
sometimes fit to burst. And to think I’ve got you 
to myself at last j Yes,” he repeated, in tones of 


102 THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES \ 

husky triumph, “ all to myself. There's no one can 
part us now. Neither God nor devil can take you 
from me now ! ” 

He uttered the reckless words without any blasphe- 
mous intent — in the mere wild jubilation of his mood. 
But the blear-eyed Fates — or whichever of the three 
grim old women it may be whose office it is to 
avenge the outraged gods — had already taken due 
note of them. Even science has not been able to 
dispel the instinctive dread implanted in the breast of 
man, from the savage to the sage, the dread of ex- 
citing the jealousy of the powers that be by defiant 
boasts of a happiness beyond the measure allotted 
to mortals. But John was intoxicated with his new- 
born bliss, as one drunk with new wine, and he did 
not count the meaning of his words. 

Portia, in her present calm and sad disposition of 
mind, was frightened at their vehemence. By some 
unaccountable freak of fancy they seemed to conjure 
up once more the picture of Harry's Madonna to her 
spiritual vision. . She had thought the noonday spec- 
tre had been finally laid to rest ; but here it was again 
confronting her, with the same dark enigmatic ex- 
pression in its haunting eyes as when she had first 
stood in front of it at the Academy by Harry's side. 
To free her mind from the oppression of it, she raised 
her eyes timidlv towards her husband. What an ex- 
ultant look there was in his face ! And how his lips, 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 


103 

that the close, square cut of beard and moustache had 
almost disclosed entirely, seemed to relish the impal- 
pable delicacies they were tasting ! It made her al- 
most feel like Little Red Riding- Hood in presence of 
the wolf to watch them — only John had not a wolf-face 
though just now, it must be owned, there was some- 
thing in it that recalled a hungry wolfs expression. 

“We shall not be in Norway more than a fortnight, 
nor away more than three weeks in all, I suppose, 
John ? ” she questioned timidly. 

She had forced herself to pronounce his name ; but 
it was uttered almost under her breath. He heard it, 
nevertheless, and turned a rapturous face towards her. 

“We won’t be in a hurry to get back, I promise 
you, my pet,” he said. “ It’s a stupid arrangement 
that we’ve got to stick on there at Emma’s until five 
o’clock this afternoon. I tell you what : we’ll go 
away as soon as lunch is over. We can go for a 
drive or something till it’s time for our train.” 

'‘Oh, but I cant," protested his wife, her heart 
sinking at the prospect. “ I left all kinds of things 
to do to the last, and I shall have to be up in my 
room putting by and packing up to the last moment.” 

“ I’ll come and help you, then ; it’ll help to pass 
the time.” 

“ No ! ” she said, wondering at the decision of her 
own voice; “that cannot be. You must sit and 
smoke with Wilmer until I come to call you,” 


104 


THE PENANCE OF FOR TIA /AMES. 


“ Those are my orders, eh ! ” he said laughingly. 
“You’re going to begin to boss me already, are you? 
Now you’ll just see what you gain by that.” 

“Oh, oh, my best going-away bonnet ! ” shrieked 
Portia, covering her face with her hands ; and at this 
moment the brougham came to an opportune stand- 
still at the door of the Kensington mansion. 

I am not going to enter into details respecting the 
glories of the “breakfast-lunch” (as Mrs. James 
called it) that followed. It is a sorry task to describe 
not-to-be tasted dishes, almost as sorry as to assist 
at the Barmecide’s Feast afore-mentioned. Everyone 
can imagine for himself the perfection of Wilmer's 
old port — about which, perhaps, his judgment was 
surer (though not in his own opinion) than with re- 
gard to his “ old masters.” Everyone may likewise 
take it for granted that the chicken mayonnaise, the 
Cingalese curry, and the pate de foie gras in aspic 
were all that they ought to have been. Mrs. James, 
like Todgers’s, could do it when she chose, and, with 
a perpetual silver-mine in Queensland to fall back 
upon, it was not hard for her to emulate Mrs. Tod- 
gers when she did choose. Although there was no 
one but the clergyman to be impressed by them, the 
wedding-cake was wreathed with as brave a show of 
costly orchids and out-of-season blooms as though 
all London had been there to applaud. Nothing, 
indeed, that the proceeds of the silver-mine could 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 


105 


procure to heighten the effect had been forgotten ; 
and as nobody was to suspect that, in the case of at 
least one of those who sat down to the banquet, the 
traditional dinner of herbs would have been far pre- 
ferable if the traditional compensating element had 
been there as well, it followed that, on the surface, 
all appeared to go as “ merrily as a marriage bell." 
Mr. Benson, the clergyman, to whom Australians of 
Wilmers type were a new experience, sat on the 
right hand of the gorgeous sapphire-velvet-and-sal- 
mon-silk-arrayed mistress of the house, with the 
newly-married couple opposite to him. Upon these 
he made his reflections between the intervals of tast- 
ing Wilmer s Australian wine, or listening to his opin- 
ions concerning Imperial Federation from an antipo- 
dean point of view. The bride appeared to him to 
be somewhat too refined for her surroundings ; and 
what a curiously far-away look those strange brown 
eyes of hers, with the warm, rust-colored motes in 
the iris, seemed to wear ! What a singular contrast 
they presented to the prominent eyes of the man who 
had just been made her husband — wherein the love 
of good cheer was perhaps a little too plainly written ! 
Then the host was not quite like any one he had ever 
met before. Nevertheless, Wilmers conversation 
was interesting to him. He knew all about the State 
school organisation in the various Australian colonies, 
gould tell of the origin and growth of the eight-hours' 


I0 6 THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 

system all over Australia, and, as long as he abstained 
from talking of Claudes and Ruysdaels, was an intel- 
ligent companion enough. He even possessed a 
certain glibness in speech-making, and, after he had 
successfully wedged his eyeglass into its place, stood 
up before the little party of four (a much harder thing 
than to stand up before a party of forty) and drank to 
the health of the newly-married couple, “ whose 
union,” he declared, “had cemented ties that had 
first been formed in the forest primeval, and that 
were now more firmly knit than ever in the midst of 
civilisation.” 

John, without rising from his seat, responded by 
declaring that he had never been much of a fist at 
speech-making. But his friend Wilmer might make 
his mind easy about one thing. He knew he was the 
luckiest chap in the world, and he hoped they would 
never regret giving him Portia for his wife. He 
meant to do all a man could do to prove himself 
deserving of his happiness. His flow of speech 
failing him at this point, Wilmer rapped the table 
and said “ Hear, hear,” and the clergyman came to 
the rescue by proposing the health of the hostess, 
coupled with that of the bride. After this ceremony 
Portia was free to make her escape upstairs, where 
she hoped to spend the last few hours of her liberty 
in mournful, unhampered solitude. 


CHAPTER IX. 


The next episode in the strange, eventful history of 
our heroine is of so curious and unprecedented a 
nature, that it is necessary to bear in mind the often- 
proved truth that Fact is stranger than Fiction, to 
make it in any way possible of belief. It concerns 
an event that could only have been brought about by 
one of those fortuitous combinations of circum- 
stances that we have agreed to call by the name of 
Chance ; as though every event, no matter of how 
trivial a kind, were not the result of a long and in- 
tricate chain of antecedent causes, whose first links 
(if, indeed, there be any first in the matter at all) are 
lost in primeval chaos. Hitherto the narrative of 
Portias life has run smoothly enough. Her quiet 
school-days in Melbourne ; her happy, healthy ex- 
istence in the Bush ; her dogs and her horses ; her 
sudden leap into richer surroundings; her journey 
to Europe ; her travels on the Continent, where the 
first step to knowledge, in the perception that she 
was woefully ignorant, was primarily taken ; her 
London balls and innocent flirtations, and finally her 
marriage with a man round whose feet she had 


108 THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 

played as a child — in all these smooth though varied 
experiences there has been nothing that could come 
under the heading of strange or eventful. It is only 
from the time when we mount with her into that 
pretty room of hers upstairs, where we witnessed a 
few weeks back the scene of her discovery of John’s 
flowers — fraught with so mighty a significance — that 
there is aught in her career to justify the use of the 
words. To have been married somewhat against 
the grain was neither strange nor eventful, for, if not 
in England, in other countries at least, marriages of 
this kind are frequent enough. The unprecedented 
part of her history has still, therefore, to come ; only, 
in order to show how such a thing as befel her could 
be possible, it will be necessary to say a few words 
about her immediate entourage. 

The house, then, that the Jameses inhabited com- 
municated at the back, by means of a garden gate, 
of which the cook kept the key, with an alley that 
gave free access to Kensington High Street. It was 
a means of egress and ingress that was only utilised 
by the servants, and its existence might almost have 
remained unsuspected by the masters for all the use 
they made of it. The existence of this door and this 
alley of communication is a necessary point to bear 
in mind. Another matter upon which it is needful 
to insist is the relation in which Portia stood to the 
domestics, From the blue-and-silver “ Jeames " to 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA /AMES. 


tog 

the scullery-maid who came from the orphanage, one 
and all adored her. To have addressed them in any 
other than the natural friendly give-and-take voice 
in which she had been wont to chat from her child- 
hood upwards with the station hands on Wilmer's 
run, would have been impossible to her. Hence, 
everyone in the house rendered her prompt and 
willing service. There was only one, however, who 
could by any means aspire to the rble of confidante in 
the sense in which we see that important function 
filled on the French stage by the lady whose duty it 
is to play “ second fiddle” to the distracted heroine, 
and to receive the outpouring of her sombre confi- 
dences ; and this was not an English servant at all, 
but a girl — she might still by courtesy be called a girl 
— who, some twelve or fifteen years older than 
her mistress, had been her first and only nurse. Her 
position in the Kensington house was ostensibly that 
of Portia s maid ; but our heroine, notwithstanding 
the affection she cherished for nurse Eliza, was ac- 
customed to do for herself, in the best sense of this 
familiar un-Websterian phrase, and beyond an occa- 
sional brushing and combing of her young mistress’s 
resplendent locks, Eliza found little to do but to 
brush her riding-habit and put in her frillings. Being, 
however, of a conscientious turn of mind, she em- 
ployed her leisure in checking the transactions of 
the cook with the tradespeople, and was consequent- 


I to THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 

ly a thorn in the side of all the personnel , from the 
butler downwards. That this woman would have 
gone through fire and water — not only metaphorically 
but actually — to save her, Portia entertained not the 
smallest doubt. Eliza had had a love disappoint- 
ment, but, instead of being soured by it, she had 
turned the pent-up flood of her affections in the 
direction of her charge, and the little girl had felt 
herself borne along upon it, as upon a smooth, strong 
current, until she grew to womanhood. Why she 
did not confide in her nurse during the troublous 
time that preceded her union with John Morrisson it 
would be hard to say. I am afraid it was for the 
reason that, though she could make sure of Eliza's 
unbounded love and devotion, she did not feel so 
certain of her wisdom ; and here it may be said she 
was mistaken. Real affection is wonderfully clair- 
voyant, and singleness of purpose and goodness of 
heart will often dictate the proper thing to be said 
and done more surely than the most cultivated in- 
tellect. However this may be, Portia never disclosed 
her secret ; and though she pined in thought, as she 
did not at the same time wear an outward green and 
yellow melancholy, it was not easy to divine her 
trouble. Eliza opined that her young mistress could 
have no aversion to Mr. John, after she had kept 
company with him for all these years ; and though 
in her own heart she considered him too red and too 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA J AMES . j 1 1 

rough to be a suitable match for her young lady, she 
would no more have thought of finding fault with 
the arrangement, than of cavilling at Mr. James's 
choice of “old masters/' or of criticising Mrs. James's 
taste in dress. It was an understood thing that, 
when Portia had a house of her own, nurse Eliza 
6hould go to her in the elastic capacity of confidential 
servant; and with this prospect in view, and the sure 
hope that her mistress would find her employment 
as speedily as possible, in the shape of a baby to 
look after, she had witnessed the preparations for the 
wedding with comparative equanimity. 

Now, however, the parting hour grew near. The 
marriage ceremony had been solemnised. The break- 
fast was over. The cake had been cut and distributed 
and in a very few hours Portia's home would know 
her no more. Mightily depressed by these consider- 
ations, which she had never seemed to fully realise 
until now, Eliza ascended to her young mistress's 
room, with red-rimmed, swollen eyes — she possessed, 
it may be said, a good and not uncomely face of 
her own, of plebeian type — and implored that she 
might be allowed to do just whatever came to hand. 
In her secret heart Portia, perhaps, would rather have 
been left alone. Among the little relics she still had 
to pack away there were many over which she would 
fain have lingered before burying them, and the as- 
sociations they conjured up, for ever out of her sight. 


1 12 the PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 

I have alluded to her innocent flirtations. More than 
one was recalled to her as she turned over the store 
of her girlish treasures now. Her book of pressed 
flowers, wherein every faded blossom was accom- 
panied by the name of a place and a date, was as full 
of eloquent meaning to her as though it had contained 
pages of burning poems. The chronicle opened with 
a sprig of Australian myrtle that John had given her 
years ago — and the hand in which she had inscribed 
the native name of the place where he had found it, 
was obviously unformed and childish. But there 
were other chapters in the record too. How fresh 
the bunch of beautiful wildflowers from King George’s 
Sound still looked, and how fresh in her mind was 
the expression on the face of the blue-eyed second 
officer of the Ismail who had gathered them for her ! 
How plainly he had made her understand, before she 
left the ship, that it was only his sailor-poverty that 
prevented him from laying heart and hand at her feet ! 
And the Alpine edelweiss that a young English traveller 
— who turned out to be a great personage at home, 
and who had spoken so mysteriously and sadly about 
the signification oi obligations — had plucked for her ! — 
he who had married the very plain-looking girl with 
royal blood in her veins, that had been pointed out to 
her in the Park as his bride ! These and many others. 
How plainly they proved that her heart had been 
still a rover — all unknown to herself — while she was 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 113 

addressing her fortnightly duty epistles to her future 
husband in Queensland ! She would fain have pon- 
dered over these and many other tokens of a past 
happy existence (how far away from her it seemed 
already !) in solitude. There was yet another volume 
in which neither flowers were pressed, nor names of 
places or dates inscribed, and which seemed never- 
theless to have more to say to her than all the rest 
together, and this was none other than the prosaic 
Academy catalogue that she had not yet found it in 
her heart to part with, and which she had deceitfully 
insinuated, to prevent it from being claimed, into one 
of those dainty coverings in old brocades, wherein 
books in one sense can certainly be said to wear 
" new faces. ” The only message it contained was in 
the underlining in violet pencil-marks of certain 
paintings, statues, and engravings. Yet to Portia it 
furnished a text for many a reverie. In whatever 
other respect nurse Eliza might be fitted to play the 
role of confidante , it was not upon topics like these that 
our heroine could unburden her mind to her. The 
fancies suggested by her collection of souvenirs intimes 
were not of those that can well be uttered aloud. So 
delicate and fleeting they were, indeed, that she hard- 
ly even formulated them in her own mind. They 
might have been embodied in a nocturne, set in a 
minor key, to be deftly played in the twilight, but 

nothing more. However, as she could not ask Eliza 
8 


1 1 4 The penance of portia /ames. 

to depart in the face of her tear-swollen eyes, and with 
the certain knowledge that the faithful creature would 
proceed to cry them out in real earnest as soon as 
she was outside the door, she busied her in wrapping 
up and putting by some indifferent books taken from 
the book-shelf for the special purpose — a work which 
might have been just as well left, she told herself, 
until her return. Eliza was finding an outlet for her 
emotions in banging and dusting these volumes, 
which required, to tell the truth, neither form of dis- 
cipline, accompanying the operation meanwhile by 
an occasional sniff of distress, when she was suddenly 
summoned from the room. She was away long 
enough to give Portia the time to take up the inter- 
rupted train of her somewhat mournful meditations 
once more ; and when she returned it was with a face 
that bore an important hint of something unforeseen 
and mysterious to be communicated 

“What has happened, Eliza?” asked her mis- 
tress, quietly. As nothing, not even “God or devil,” 
to quote John’s words (that somehow recurred to her 
memory at this moment), could un - marry her now, 
Portia felt that the would-be importance expressed 
in her maid’s face, in connection with whatever 
news she might have to impart to her, was clearly 
superfluous and uncalled for. Supposing the kitchen 
chimney to be on fire, or the Queen to have suddenly 
departed this life — the two contingencies that first 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 


1 15 


suggested themselves to her imagination — she would 
none the less have to leave the house as “ Mrs. John 
Morrisson ” in another two hours : none the less be 
whirled away, by her husband's side, in the night- 
train for Flushing, where it was arranged that they 
should rest until they resumed their journey on the 
morrow. So she repeated once more, in indifferent 
tones, 4 'What has happened, Eliza? Is anything 
wrong ? ” 

The maid shut the door before replying, with the 
same elaborate air of mystery that had marked her 
demeanour from the beginning. There was some- 
thing portentous in her expression. "My dear,” 
she said — it was only upon occasions where etiquette 
had to be considered that she called her young mis- 
tress "Miss” — "there's a lady below — I won't 
answer for it she's a real lady, though — who says 
she wants to see you. I never set eyes on her 
before myself, and she’s never been near the place 
yet that / know of. She's all in black, and she's 
brought a baby along with her. She was that eager 
and excited when I went down, and out o' breath 
with running all the way from High Street — so she 
told me. James wouldn't let her in until she told 
her business ; but she wouldn't, and they couldn't 
get her to go away neither, and so they had to send 
for me.” 

" I don't see why I shouldn't see her,” said Portia, 


1 1 6 THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 

simply; “but did you ask her whether she could 
not send me a message by you ? ” 

“ That's just what I did,” said the maid. It would 
not have been in human nature — not in an abigail’s 
nature, at least — to refrain from the temptation of 
making the most of the occasion. “ ‘What is your 
business, ma'am?' I said — just like that. ‘Our 
young lady is going away on her honeymoon 
this very afternoon, and can't see you,' I says. The 
lady says nothing to that for a good minute or more. 
She seemed to be catching her breath, like, behind 
her veil ; for she's got a long black veil, that thick 
you can't hardly see her face through it. Then she 
says, in a kind of a choked voice, ‘So Miss James 
is married ! ' she says. ‘ Married this morning, 
ma’am,' says I. ‘Well,' says she, holding her 
throat — this way — ‘I hope you'll let me see her. 
I've got a present for her ; it's a present no one can 
give her but me. Perhaps she'll take it along with 
her on her wedding-trip. Ask her to see me for her 
own sake, if she won’t see me for mine,' and with 
that she outs with a pencil and a bit of paper from 
her pocket, hitches her baby under her arm, and 
scribbles off a letter as fast as you please ; and noth- 
ing 'll content her after that but we must fetch her a 
henvelope from below stairs, and she must gum it 
down herself.” 

Having improved the occasion to her own satis- 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 


1 17 

faction as regarded the agreeable and stimulating 
task of narrating all the preliminaries in extenso , 
Eliza now bethought herself of handing the letter to 
her mistress. Portia took it from her with irresolute 
hands. What possible reference to her own affairs 
could the affairs of the mysterious visitor involve? 
And why should she have chosen her wedding-day 
of all others as the one upon which to divulge the 
secret? Her cheeks were flushed with agitated 
anticipation as she tore the envelope open. Was it 
relief, was it disappointment, was it simple astonish- 
ment that was painted in her face as she read : “It 
is Mary Willett that begs and prays of you to see 
her — the daughter of John Willett, of Yarraman 
Station. I would have come before, but I only just 
heard by chance an hour ago that you were getting 
married to Mr. Morrisson. For the love of Heaven, 
Miss James, let me see you alone. I won't delay 
you long." 

Mary Willett ! The girl who was to join her father 
at the dear old homestead Portia had loved so well ! 
The little lass, about whom she had heard so much 
and so often from old John, as she galloped by his 
side round the station fences ! The person about 
whom she had asked, before all others, to be informed 
at her first memorable interview with her lover six 
weeks ago. Mary Willett in London, and in distress 
— most evidently in distress ! Oh, why had not she 


Il8 THE PENANCE OF PORT! A JAMES . 

known it before ? Of course she would see her, of 
course she would help her ! The trouble whatever 
it might be, was clearly one that concerned poor 
Mary alone. But perhaps she had felt a delicacy in 
speaking of it before strangers, and had therefore pur- 
posely tried to give the impression that it was con- 
nected with a matter concerning Portia herself. 
Well, she had still two hours — three nearly — that she 
could call her own. It was a pity that all questions 
of money settlements should have been deferred 
until after her marriage, and that at this moment she 
should have nothing but fifteen sovereigns and some 
odd silver in her possession. Mary might need im- 
mediate help, and she must have it Thinking these 
things over in the flash of an instant, Portia turned 
to the eagerly-expectant Eliza, and disappointed her 
cruelly by announcing in a calm voice, “It is noth- 
ing, really nothing, Eliza ; someone who has been 
recommended to me. I know the name quite well ; 
and I ought to see her alone, I think, as she makes 
such a point of it.” 

A drama that was destined not to go beyond the 
prologue — a tale brought to an immediate and unex- 
pected close, just as it had been launched upon the 
significant opening of “ Once upon a while ” ! This, 
in other words, was the comment that Eliza, swal- 
lowing her disappointment as best she could, was 
fain to pass upon the abrupt termination to the inci- 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 119 

dent so full of promise that she had witnessed. She 
felt irritated with the young woman in black for hav- 
ing made “such a fuss all about nothing, ” as she 
complained to herself, and her irritation was expressed 
in the tart way in which she delivered the message, 
“that Miss James — Mrs. Morrisson, that was to say 
— will be pleased to see you if you’ll step this way ; 
but it’s as well to remember" (the addition was her 
own) “she hasn't a minute to spare." 

Portia was standing up to receive them, as Mary, 
holding her baby upon her left arm. entered the room. 
The deep black veil prevented her from distinguish- 
ing at, first sight the features of her visitor ; but when 
Eliza had beaten a reluctant retreat, and had closed 
the door finally in her wake, Mary threw back her 
veil, and Portia uttered an involuntary cry of surprise. 
The vision that had pursued her for so long was 
standing there in flesh and blood before her. The 
dim presentment of Harry's Madonna and Infant that 
had intruded itself upon her dreams at night, that had 
been shadowed forth during her solitary musings in 
the daytime, had become a living, breathing reality. 
The one presentiment she had ever known had been 
suddenly and miraculously verified. “But, oh ! how 
could I feel, when I saw the picture first," she asked 
herself in bewilderment, “that it spoke to me of 
something I had vaguely seen and knowrn already? 
Was it a warning of what was to come? But, no 1 


120 the PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 

It was more like a groping after something I had 
lost. ” 

The answer to her question was to come sooner 
than she could have anticipated. The explanation 
of the mystery that had haunted her so long and so 
persistently was to fall upon her comprehension at 
last like a thunderbolt. Before she had well-nigh 
recovered from the shock of surprise that the unex- 
pected appearance of the Madonna in the person of 
Mary Willett had occasioned her, the latter had made 
a rapid step forward, and was thrusting the baby — 
a solemn-eyed baby that neither cried nor laughed — 
into her arms. 

“ Take him,” she was saying hysterically, as Portia 
mechanically stretched out her arms for the child, 
“ take him and keep him. Oh ! it's no time for com- 
pliments, Miss James ; if youd been through what I 
have, you wouldn’t stop to make compliments either. 
Take him and look at him well. He’s John Morris- 
son’s child, if you want to know. He’s nobody else’s. 
He’s my present to John Morrisson and his wife on 
their wedding-day. You may give him a lot of chil- 
dren yet, but you won’t give him any that’ll be more, 
like their father. You can tell him so from me, if you 
choose. Oh, my God, my God ! what’ll become of 
us all l ” 

The last exclamation was accompanied by a burst 
of unrelieving, agonising tears. She had sunk down 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 


121 


upon the first chair that came to hand, and was rock- 
ing herself to and fro in a reckless abandonment of 
despair, as one who had passed the point at which 
self-restraint and dignity of demeanour are any longer 
considerations worth taking into account 


CHAPTER X. 


And Portia ! Portia stood, with the baby in her 
arms (he had submitted to the transfer, and had even 
let his head nestle against her shoulder without any 
kind of protest), as one turned to stone. For a mo- 
ment her brain seemed to*refuseto act. Overwhelm- 
ing as the revelation she had just heard had been, 
impossible of realization, or even of comprehension, 
as it had appeared, there was yet even more behind 
it than Mary herself knew. For here, with her hus- 
bands child in her arms, with John's very eyes 
looking up towards her from the baby face, with 
John's tasting lips repeated in the baby mouth, the 
haunting signifiance of Harry’s picture had finally 
come home to Portia's understanding once and for- 
ever. If presentiment had had its say, there had been 
a tangible association of ideas as well. How could 
she have failed to see the resemblance before ! Why 
need she ha ve waited until the fatal, the irretrievable 
step that sealed her doom had been taken before she 
thought of coupling the face of the infant in the pic- 
ture with the face of the man she called her husband ! 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 123 

Oh, fool that she had been, and fool — a thousand times 
fool — to let her heart be moved by the ready lies he 
had told her ! He faithful and constant, serving his 
time for her in the bush, as Jacob had served his seven 
years for his well-beloved Rachel ! He a Sir Galahad 
among men, as she had innocently believed him to 
be ! She could have found it in her heart to laugh 
out loud, bitterly and scornfully, at her own utter 
foolishness and credulity. Well, the awakening had 
come, and it was a thorough one. * All the written 
and spoken arguments in the world, all the proofs 
that poets and philosophers had ever accumulated of 
the truth of the simple statement that “men were 
deceivers ever,” gathered in a heap before her, could 
not have brought such strong, such overwhelming 
conviction as the one short damnatory experience of 
the last few seconds. Her brain seemed literally to 
reel under the shock, her knees to give way under her. 
It was necessary to pull herself together, physically 
as well as morally, to call her best energies up be- 
fore considering what now remained to be done. She 
felt as though she had leaped at one bound from in- 
nocent, ignorant girlhood into mature and cynical 
womanhood. Never could she feel the same again ! 
Never could the world put on the same aspect that 
it had worn only five minutes ago ! Never could men 
and women, and the relations they bore to each other, 
become the same that she had fancied them only this 


124 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 


morning ! But it was not a time for dealing with the 
abstract side of the question. There would be time 
for that later. Anna Ross would help to achieve the 
work of enlightenment in which Portia herself had 
taken so tremendous a step on this her wedding morn- 
ing. At the present moment it was action — not re- 
flection — that was needed. What if Mary Willett were 
secretly married to John ? God forgive her, but it 
would be the most acceptable solution of the trouble 
that she could imagine ! Her heart gave a bound at 
the thought that even now she might be legally as 
well as morally free. But it sank again as she re- 
flected upon the improbability of John’s having per- 
formed such a transparently and easily detected feat 
of bigamy. But time was speeding, and she would 
want to escape. At all costs, and whatever should 
betide, escape was the first and only consideration. 
Let her only try now to keep cool, and to get at the 
rights of this wonderful story. With a mighty effort 
at self-control, she drew near to where Mary was 
seated, and still holding John’s child tenderly upon 
her arm (it is wonderful with what an instinctive 
knack of tenderness every true woman, be she maid 
or mother, will hold a little baby), she laid her hand 
upon the sobbing girl’s, and said gently : “Tell me 
all about it, and how I can help you, Mary. We 
have known each other in one way, haven’t we, 
since we were quite children? This is a trouble that 


THE PENANCE OF P0PT7 A JAMES. 125 

concerns us both, and I must know all there is to 
know before anything can be done. First of all, are 
you married to John Morrisson ? ” 

“No, no! I'm — I'm not/' sobbed Mary ; “that's 
where it is. That's why I'm fit to drown myself, if 
it wasn’t for the baby. Oh, my God ! my God ! 
What is to become of me and him ? " 

There was no getting her to speak in her present 
condition. Portia drew a chair by her side, and sate 
herself down, with the little one on her knees, to re- 
flect upon the situation. She felt as though she were 
under the influence of one of those portentous dreams, 
such as Jane Eyre dreamed the night before she fled 
from Mr. Rochester — such as most people have 
dreamed when the air about them is thick with im- 
pending disaster — a dream wherein she found herself 
carrying a wailing infant in her arms, with the im- 
possibility of either laying it down or ridding herself 
of the burden. But in her sleep the dreary nightmare 
had never weighed upon her with the force of her 
actual impressions. . . . And who was there to 

whom she could turn for help or counsel ? Who that 
would assist her now to put herself entirely out of 
John's reach ? For as long as he knew where to find 
her, there could be no safety, no refuge for her. 
Others might laugh at her fears ; they might say that 
in London, in the nineteenth century, the drama 
whereby the Sabine maidens became Roman spouses 


126 The PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 

was one that could not well be repeated. But Portia 
knew better. She knew that John considered himself 
literally in the light of her legal lord and master now 
— of her owner , if it came to that. She had seen it 
in his eyes as they drove home together in thebroug 
ham a while ago as man and wife. She had seen it 
in the avidity that marked his unresting lips. She 
had heard it in the voice in which he declared that 
neither God nor devil could take her from him now. 
Well ! that might turn out to have been a vain boast 
after all. She had money enough, thank Heaven ! 
to enable her to run away and hide herself for to-day 
at least, and before they had found her she would 
have made up her mind as to the course of action she 
should take. She would begin by putting herself 
under the protection of Anna Ross, whose actual 
whereabouts was known to none of them. But time 
pressed, and there was still so much to do. Hardly 
an hour in which to lay her plans and make her 
escape. And there was Mary to be thought of, and 
the baby. And how were they to make their way 
out of the house without being seen and followed ! 
And how should she herself escape pursuit and re- 
capture ? The very recklessness of her project— the 
danger attending it — seemed to inspire Portia with 
courage. Her resolution rose as she measured the 
difficulty of her enterprise. Just as the bodily frame 
will perform unheard-of feats under the spur of some 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 127 

tremendous excitation, so, in rare crises, the mind 
will act with quite a new and unwonted energy. 
During the interval that Portia accorded Mary for 
crying tout son soul (as the French say) — in other 
words, for sobbing her very heart out — by her side, 
she had arranged her plan of escape. The calm that 
comes of a supreme resolution irrevocably taken was 
in her voice as she addressed herself again to the 
latter. 

“ You had better tell me all, Mary,” she said gently. 
“I am sure I shall be able to help you. Take your 
little one into your arms again — so — there. He was 
just going to cry, and then what should we have done ?” 

“ You're too g-good to me, miss,” gurgled Mary, 
breaking down once more ; she took the child never- 
theless and, Portia — with a spasm of wonderment, 
wherein a thousand confused sensations of pity, re- 
volt, tenderness, and repulsion (the instincts of wife- 
hood, motherhood, and nature, arrayed against what 
Carlyle would have called the artificialities of her 
actual existence) fought a tour de role to get the up- 
per hand — saw her gather the little creature to her 
bosom for nourishment. The simple operation of 
such sublime significance withal had an instantly 
pacifying effect upon mother and child. Portia 
thought of a certain line in a poem she knew by heart : 
‘Baby fingers, waxen touches press me from the mother’s breast,” 
with quite a new understanding of its meaning. In 


128 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 


the childless surroundings she had been accustomed 
to all her life the ways of mothers and their offspring 
had been as a sealed book to her. The ineffable con- 
tent in the eyes of the little one — John’s very eyes — 
moved her with an infinite pity. Not only were 
mothers and children, but a woman placed in the 
circumstances in which Mary had appeared before 
her, equally novel facts in her experience. She had 
read of such cases, certainly. David CopperJield,{oY 
instance, was well known to her; and the impression 
she had retained from her reading of that and similar 
works was that a ‘‘fallen” girl (for this she knew 
was the approved adjective to employ in cases so 
analogous to Mary’s) — that a “ fallen” woman must 
be looked upon as a kind of moral leper, whose very 
skirts it would be a contamination for an “honest 
woman ” to touch. Now, however, that she was 
drawing her experience no longer from books, but 
from real living facts, the matter seemed to put on 
quite a different aspect. No tragic phrases suggested 
themselves to her imagination ; nor did they, appar- 
ently, to Mary’s. Her mental attitude (as George 
Eliot would have said) was notone of anger or indig- 
nation, but rather of a great and sorrowing pity. 
Mary had probably been deceived by John as she had 
been deceived herself, and had believed that, Church 
or no Church, she was wedded to him, in point of 
fact, for time and eternity. 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 


129 

“ Tell me how this trouble came upon you, Mary,” 
she asked once more. . “ I can be going on with my 
preparations while you are talking.” 

Truth to tell, there was little time to lose. She had 
unstrapped an ancient valise of small dimensions — 
it was one of those she had intended to take upon her 
wedding-trip, with the naive design of concealing the 
fact that she was a bride — and bundling out (for she 
was in a desperate hurry) all that bore her new and 
hated name, she thrust into it such of her former 
articles of attire as might be required for immediate 
use. The tailor-made suit was next disinterred from 
its hiding-place — it would be just the thing to travel 
in — and away with her bridal bravery ; was she not 
going to regain her freedom ? All the time she was 
moving nimbly about the room, making her neces- 
sary and speedy preparations (and perhaps marvel- 
ling a little at her own promptitude of action in an 
emergency), she was encouraging Mary to make full 
and open confession. 

“ Yes, I understand. I see how it was. Oh, what 
a pity ! Don't be afraid to tell the rest, Mary.” With 
such intercalations she contrived to extract from the 
unwilling lips of the weeping girl the tale of her own 
ruin. 

“ You see, miss,” she began — Portia would have 
been the first to resent the employment of her new 
and rightful title — “I was pretty near the only 
9 


130 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 


woman at Yarraman when I went out that time ( af- 
ter you'd gone away, you know) to keep house for 
father. There was a lot of men about the place ; 
but father, he used to keep me pretty well by his side 
when he'd be out counting the lambs in the home 
paddock, maybe, or seeing to things about the 
place. He'd be so sorry you was gone. He thought 
a lot of me, you know, miss, and he'd say, ‘ You 
wouldn't have wanted for someone to talk to, my 
dear, if Miss Portia had a-been here.' He thought 
no one was too good for me — poor father " ( a pro- 
found sigh accompanied these words, followed by 
a long pause). “Well, I don't suppose I'd been 
three weeks at the station — and pretty dull I found 
it, I can tell you ; it was in the January, and the 
place so burned up you couldn't walk over it for the 
cracks in the ground — it was almost three weeks, 
you may say, after I'd come up that Mr. Morrisson 
wrote word to say he was coming. Pd heard say you 
was engaged to him, and I was curious enough 
to see him. I used to go up of an evening to 
the verandah at the homestead after I'd taken a dip 
in the water-hole — you remember, miss, the water- 
hole in the bed of the creek — and let down my back- 
hair to dry, I was sitting that way one evening 
when a gentleman comes riding up — you may guess 
who he was — and seems struck of a heap, like, 
to see me. And that was just how it all begun. I 


the penance of Portia James. 

couldn’t but think a little of him after that. It was 
like as if he’d been so pleased and so astonished at 
finding me there. He couldn’t take his eyes off 
me at first. And I believed what he told me, 
miss. I believed it as if it was Gospel truth. He 
told me he had been engaged to you once on a 
while, but that you wanted to break it off. He said I 
was the only person in the world that could console 
him — and, miss, he spoke that soft and loving I 
couldn’t help believing him. Father never thought 
any harm. So long as Mr. Morrisson was there he’d 
go off to the township, or go riding round the fences. 
He was away two days and a night once, with a fire 
that had broken out on the next run and partly on 
ours. ” 

“And Mr. Morrisson was in charge, I suppose?” 
put in Portia, shaking out the tailor-made dress, and 
placing it in readiness to put on. 

“ Yes, he was in charge,” said Mary, reluctantly ; 
“and, miss, I did believe in him then. There was 
nothing I wouldn’t have done for him. I believe I'd 
have blacked his boots for him if he’d asked me. 
But he didn’t. He came down to the cottage, and 
he got me to go up to the homestead and dine with 
him. Me and him all alone. And he told me it was 
just like as if we were man and wife already, for we 
was to go down to be married the very week after in 
Melbourne. Oh ! I did believe him, miss. He told 


132 the penance of porTia James. 

me he only didn't speak to father because father'd 
got it into his head that he was bound to marry you 
— and there ! I believe my head was turned. He 
waited on me at that dinner as if I was a queen ; 
he'd pour out the champagne for me with his own 
hands, and he said it would be always like that. 
He called me Mrs. Morrisson, and he praised me up 
to the skies and, oh ! miss, I was a wicked, foolish 
girl — but more foolish than wicked, I believe. Well ! 
I've been punished enough since/’ 

“And afterwards?" asked Portia — her voice 
sounded dry in her own ears. “I want to know 
how you came to leave your home." 

“What could I do else?" cried Mary; there was 
helpless despair in her accents. “Soon after, I pre- 
tended to poor father I must go down to Melbourne to 
stop with a board-ship friend. Mr. Morrisson was in 
Queensland. He hadn't sent for me as he promised, 
and I was beside myself with terror and misery. But 
he came back before my baby was born — and, if 
you'll believe it, miss, father found out what was the 
matter — and, miss, it broke his heart. The doctors 
said afterwards his heart had always been weak ; 
but that makes no difference — it was I killed him. 
Oh ! I can't speak of it, miss," she covered her face 
with her handkerchief and broke into a fresh wail of 
anguish. “ I've not been to look after the money or 
anything, fori feel just as though I'd murdered him. 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 133 

Well, when my baby was born, Mr. Morrisson let 
me know pretty clearly he'd no intention of marry- 
ing me, and I hadn’t any hold upon him. I cursed 
him, I did, in father’s name and my own ; but he 
didn’t care for that. He said he’d send me money 
as long as I gave him no more trouble — and, per- 
haps, when his Queensland business was settled up, 
he’d think about marrying me, after all. But I must 
go to America, he said, where I wasn’t known, and 
he’d send me money and come to join me later. 
Well, I had no choice, it seemed. I went off to San 
Francisco under the name of Mrs. Morris ; but after 
I’d stayed there eating my heart out for six weeks or 
more, I made up my mind to come on home and 
wait for him. It seemed more home-like in London 
— and I had an aunt here too ; but she died before I 
could join her. I told the woman I was lodging with 
in San Francisco to send me on my money and my 
letters ; but from the day I left I’ve never heard a 
word of her or of Mr. Morrisson either until to-day, 
and it was only by a chance, when I was posing — 
that’s what they call it, miss, when you’re sitting for 
your portrait (not quite your portrait, you know, but 
to figure in a picture under anybody else’s name) — 
while I was posing in young Mr. Tolhurst’s studio, 
miss — ah ! that’s a gentleman and a Christian, if you 
like — that I found out you was going to be married 
this morning, and who to. I thought I should have 


THE PENANCE OF PORT! A JAMES . 


134 

died, miss, on the spot. I took up my baby and I ran 
out of the house as though 1 were mad — Mr. Tolhurst 
did think I was mad, I believe — and I ran for a cab 
and drove all the way to the church thinking I’d stop 
the banns ; but it was too late, and I got out and ran 
straight here. ” 

“ But how did you find out? and who told you? ” 
questioned Portia. “Not Mr. Tolhurst, was it?” 

She had turned her face away as she made the in- 
quiry, feigning to be absorbed once more in the 
arrangement of her wearing apparel in the valise. 

“Mr. Tolhurst? No, miss. I believe it was Pro- 
vidence. In the picture he’s doing of me — leastways 
it is me, though he’s called it ‘News from the Camp/ 
— I’ve got to be sitting reading a newspaper. Many’s 
the time he’s put a paper in my hand before ; but, 
bless you, I never thought o’ looking at what was 
printed in it. But this morning, of all mornings in 
the world, I must needs fix my eyes on the very lines 
that told about you and Mr. Morrisson. To be mar- 
ried on the 27th, it said — and there was the name of 
the church and all ! ” 

She paused, and for a long time Portia made no com- 
ment. What she had been thinking, however, might 
almost have been divined by her expression as she 
turned her face towards Mary and said slowly : 

“ It was with the idea of preventing the marriage 
that you came to the church, I suppose ? ” 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 


135 

The other hung her head. 1 ‘ Miss, I was beside 
myself. To have my baby branded for base-born all 
his life — him that’s got his fathers face, that it’ud 
have been a pride and a pleasure to see ’em together 
— it was more than I could stand. I ought to have 
thought about you. Why, when I came running on 
here awhile ago, well-nigh out of my mind, I couldn’t 
tell but what you’d have me put outside the door by 
the servants. But I didn’t seem to care. Oh, miss, 
you are a young lady ! — you was never in the way 
of being tempted as I was, and I don’t want to excuse 
myself; but I had no mother by me, and Mr. Morris- 
son he did speak so fair.” 

She had begun to weep afresh. Tears seemed, 
indeed, to be the only relief to the sense of rankling 
injury that she evidently carried about with her. 
Portia compassionated her — and with sincerity — but, 
at this moment, she was thinking more of her own 
case than of Mary’s. If Providence had indeed directed 
her eyes, as Mary had said, to that newspaper par- 
agraph, why could it not have happened only just 
one hour earlier? She would have had no occasion 
to play the part of a runaway wife then. How easily 
matters might still have been arranged before the fatal 
“ I will ” had been pronounced — before her hand had 
traced so unwillingly the unreal, unfamiliar signature 
of Portia Morrisson in the book they had set before 
her. Perhaps Mary’s eyes had fallen upon the para- 


136 THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 

graph at the very instant when John had uttered aloud 
his blasphemous boast. He had dared something 
more than Providence to take her away from him, 
she remembered. In obedience to which form of 
power was she going to prove to him now how vain 
that boast had been? “But I cannot reason it out 
at this moment/' she reflected hurriedly. “There is 
only one thing I am clear about. I must get out of 
his way as fast as ever I can.” 

Her little valise was packed by this time. Her 
wedding-ring, John's engagement-ring,andsuch other 
costly gifts as he had bought her were left scattered 
upon the table. She took her watch, her diamond 
earrings, and one or two valuables. Of the fifteen 
sovereigns which represented all the money she could 
lay her hands upon, she pressed five upon her visitor 
wherewith to buy a present for the baby. 

“And now, Mary,” she said in a firm voice, after 
all these arrangements were concluded, “ I owe you 
a lifelong debt of gratitude. You have saved me from 
taking a step I should have repented more bitterly 
than I can say. I am not going away with — with 
Mr. Morrisson. I don’t look upon him as my hus- 
band at all. Go back to your lodgings now and leave 
me your address. Mr. Morrisson shall be sent to you 
to-day. He is yours, and not mine ; and if the law 
cannot be made to interfere (which I think it can be), 
we must act for ourselves, I am going to some 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 137 

friends — for I must be out of the way ; but I shall con- 
trive to hear how you are getting on, and I will see 
that justice is done you. My own marriage is no 
marriage. Yours is the only real one " — she stopped 
short — the phrases in Anna's letter suggested them- 
selves to her memory. Was there such a thing as 
real marriage at all ? “Now you had better go ; you 
have carried out the thing you came for." 

“And — and you’re not angry, miss," stammered 
Mary, rising with a bewildered air. Burning resent- 
ment, a bitter desire for vengeance, hatred towards 
her betrayer, a deeper hatred perhaps towards her 
rival, the woman he was about to marry — all these 
feelings had held her in their power as she entered 
the room. Now they had given way to astonishment 
and gratitude. Astonishment, perhaps, was the 
uppermost feeling of the two. 

That a newly-married bride, on the point of starting 
off on her wedding-trip with the bridegroom, should 
renounce her honeymoon and her husband as easily 
as though they had been represented by a ball-room 
partner and a round dance, was a phenomenon un- 
dreamed of in her philosophy. What she had intended 
to bring about by her denunciation she was not 
quite clear. Vengeance had been the sentiment that 
had mainly dictated her action. She had felt on her 
way to the church as a Paris vitrioleuse (if there be such 
a word) might feel on her way to blast a hated rival. 


138 THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 

And here she had been received with pitying con- 
sideration and words of gentlest sympathy. Her rival 
had not only taken her by the hand and kindly in- 
vited her confidence, but had actually ceded the place 
to her. It was inexplicable. Perhaps it was educa- 
tion that did it. It might not be considered manners 
in Miss James's world to show one’s feelings upon 
occasions like the present one. Nevertheless, before 
she went away, Mary placed her child for the second 
time in Portia’s arms. But the gesture that accom- 
panied the action was as different from the former 
one as the expression she now wore on her 
face. 

“ I can’t say all that’s in my mind, miss,” she said 
in trembling tones; '‘but won’t you give the little 
one a kiss as a token you’ve forgiven me ? ” 

And Portia bent her head, and pressed her pure lips 
against the velvety surface of the baby cheek. Then 
with her own hands she adjusted Mary’s thick veil 
around the tear-stained face, and after writing down 
her address and promising once more that she should 
have redress, she prepared to take final leave of her, 
At the door, however, she detained her an instant 
while she said, “One thing I must ask you, Mary — 
to keep what has passed this morning a secret be- 
tween ourselves. You don’t tell Mr. Tolhurst things, 
I suppose ? ” 

“ Mr. Tolhurst ! Oh, no, miss. He’s been a good 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 139 

friend to me — I'll say that for him ; but he’s distant- 
like in his manner.” 

“Of course,” continued Portia, “I have no right 
to control your confidences. Only I couldn’t bear 
that my name should be mentioned in connection 
with anything that has happened when you are talk- 
ing to — to — outsiders, you understand ? ” 

“Yes, I quite understand, miss — and oh, dear! if 
I thought it would spoil your life, I’d undo all my 
morning’s work this minute, and thankfully too.” 

“It hasn’t spoilt my life, Mary,” replied Portia, 
gravely. “ On the contrary. And now good-bye — 
and take heart ; things may still come right in the end. ” 
She turned back into the room, after watching her 
visitor departed down the long corridor that led to a 
back staircase, whence Mary might find her way out 
of the house through the kitchen regions. Whatever 
might happen in the future, her appearance this morn- 
ing had had at least the effect of exorcising the ghost 
that had haunted Portia’s imagination so long. 
Never again would Harry’s Madonna fix, as she had 
been wont to do of late, her mournful and enigmatic 
gaze upon her whenever Portia was alone with her 
thoughts. Henceforth her, mind would be at rest 
upon that point. The enigma had been solved. The 
ghost was laid. “But I should have heeded the 
warning while there was time,” she reflected sorrow- 
fully. ‘ * Who knows whether my new-born antipathy 


HO 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 


to John — that I don’t remember feeling in Australia, 
or how could I have promised to marry him ? — was 
not dictated by a kind of occult influence, exercising 
itself through the painted efflgy of the woman who 
stood, and who still stands, between us? I have had 
an instinctive shrinking from him lately that made 
me see all his actions in what I thought must be a 
distorted kind of light. If he kissed me I felt it was 
brutal of him. And how truly my instincts spoke, 
after all ! ” 

Portia did not, however, allow her reflections to 
interfere with her preparations for her departure. She 
had always had a tendency to dress and pack, to do 
most things indeed, rouf-rouf { as the Brussels people 
call doing things in a hurry), and the habit stood 
her in good stead now. Not six minutes after Mary’s 
departure, she was standing in the tailor-made dress 
of grey tweed, upon her head a felt travelling hat and 
covered by a gossamer veil as baffling to those who 
would have penetrated its folds from the outside, as 
that of the Veiled Prophet himself ; her keys and her 
purse in an accessible pocket ; her wraps and her 
waterproof made into a geometrical bundle, with the 
aid of Wilmer’s Australian saddle-bag, that had some- 
how passed into her possession ; her demeanour com- 
posed, her mind as clear as though she had been bent 
upon no more important mission than that of taking 
the dogs for a walk. When all her arrangements 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 14 i 

were completed, she looked at herself for an instant 
in the glass before tying on her veil. Her cheeks 
were curiously pale, but there was such a light of 
fierce excitement in her eyes, that the rusty stains 
that marked their yellow-brown depths seemed to 
burn and glitter as though they were reflecting some 
inward flame. With her veil tied closely over her 
face, Portia satisfied herself that she was hardly to be 
recognized. But the outline, what painters call the 
arabesque of her figure might yet betray her. She 
reached down from a peg a long dark cloak, the 
counterpart of the one that a certain order of nursing- 
sisters wear, and threw it over her shoulders. Her 
final step was to take a piece of paper and a pencil, 
and to write, with a firm hand, the- following : 

“ Dearest Emma, — I have not gone mad, and I am 
not going to kill myself ; but I should do one or the 
other, perhaps both, if I were obliged to live with 
Mr. Morrisson now. I have just discovered that he 
has a wife (or a mistress) and a child — the latter not 
a year old. If I were to stay here I am afraid I 
should be forced to go away with him all the same ; 
so, to avoid a painful scene, I have made up my 
mind to leave the house for a time, and to hide 
somewhere until things are settled. Don’t try to 
have me followed ; it would be of no use — and don’t 
be uneasy about me. I am of age now, and can do 


142 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 


as I please, and you know that I am well able to take 
care of myself. You may just fancy I have gone to 
the seaside for a week, if you like. You will hear 
again from me soon — and meanwhile, with best love 
to Wilmer and yourself, au revoir, 

* ‘ Portia. ” 

Within this missive she placed a sealed envelope 
addressed to John Morrisson, Esq., inside which she 
had written in pencil : “If you want an explanation 
of my letter to Emma, call at No. 77 Silver Street. — 
Portia James/’ 

The signature was written with defiant clearness. 
Like many young women who are not otherwise 
distinguished as scribes, Portia had a signature 
worthy of a Minister of State. She re-read hurriedly 
her letter to her sister. Yes, it would do. There 
was nothing in its contents to warrant violent alarm 
on the part of her belongings. And now there 
remained nothing more for her to do but to make hex 
escape, with the faithful Eliza’s aid. 

But this part of her project turned out, as the event 
proved, the most difficult of all to carry into effect, 
Upon being called back into the room, after her 
curiosity had been roused to a point that was well- 
nigh unbearable by the distinct sound of smothered 
sobs proceeding from it, nurse Eliza’s face wore an 
air of justifiable resentment. Her compressed lips 


. THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 143 

plainly told of a slight offered, not only to her dignity, 
but to her most intimate feelings — her most tender 
susceptibilities. Portia saw how the case stood in a 
moment, but there was no time to perform the neces- 
sary operation of smoothing nurse Eliza down before 
enlisting her services. To do the latter justice, when 
she was made finally aware of her young mistress's 
desperate resolve, and the cause of it, her own private 
grievance in connection with the matter melted away. 
The magnitude of the news was so infinitely beyond 
anything she could have suspected or dreamed of in 
her wildest moments, that it seemed to swallow up 
all other considerations. Upon one point, however, 
nurse Eliza was obdurate. If her young lady was 
bent upon going — why, she would go with her. In 
vain, Portia expended herself in arguments to prove 
that there was no time for her to get ready in — that 
the only real service she could render was by 
remaining behind and guarding the room as though 
its occupant were still there, until such time as it 
should be incumbent upon her to betray the secret. 
The woman remained inflexible, until, at length, in 
a moment of desperation, Portia flew to the win- 
dow. 

“Til jump out of it, ” she cried vehemently ; “and 
it will be you who have killed me. I won't be 
hunted like an animal." 

She had thrown back her veil, and stood like a 


144 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 


tigress at bay ; her eyes seemed actually to throw 
out sparks of fire. 

4 ‘Oh, miss/' sobbed the terrified Eliza, “ what are 
you about? Don’t you know if you was to jump out 
I’d be after you before you’d get to the bottom ? I’ll 
do what you want ; but you’ll break my heart, you 
cruel girl, that you will.” 

“They all seem to cry but me,” said Portia to 
herself, as she pulled down her veil again, and listened 
in secret triumph to the hysteric sniffs of distress 
whereby Eliza found vent for her feelings. But 
aloud she cajoled the faithful creature with honeyed 
words. She promised that Eliza should be the 
first to hear her news. “And you shall come and 
join me, dear, I am going to friends. My letters 
will be addressed to you always , on the condition 
that you don’t betray my whereabouts. I only don’t 
tell you where I am going, in order that you may not 
have to tell a lie — you cartt tell lies, you know, 
Eliza dear — when they ask you where I am. And 
now go and see that the coast is clear ; that the door 
of the smoking-room is shut ; that my sister is having 
a nap ; that the servants are out of the way, and the 
back-door in the garden open. Then come and make 
a sign to me from the end of the corridor. I will come 
out with my valise and the saddle-bag, and in 
High Street I shall get into the first hansom I see.” 

And all these directions Eliza, in fear and trembling, 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 


145 

carried out au pied de la leltre . She cleared the path, 
as one who assists a prisoner to escape at dead of 
night from his dungeon. If James or any one of his 
silver-blue tribe had a fleeting glimpse of the nurse- 
uniform's cloak skurrying down the garden-path — if 
the groom in the coachhouse, hosing the wheels of 
the equipage that was to drive the newly-married pair 
to the station, and pondering upon the extent of the tip 
he would most probably receive from the bridegroom, 
caught a transient view of a figure so like his young 
mistress’s hurrying up the mews, that he paused to 
say, “ Well, I’m blowed ; ” there was nothing in 
either of these events that need have caused the 
fugitive alarm. Nevertheless, it was not when 
Portia had scuttled through the corridor and down 
the backstairs, not when she had left the yard, the 
garden, and the garden-door behind her, not even 
when she had received her valise at Eliza’s hand out- 
side, and had walked undisturbed into High Street 
— it was not, indeed, until she was safely ensconced 
in a swift-bowling hansom, to the driver whereof she 
had given the order ‘ ‘ London Bridge Station, ” that her 
breath seemed to come freely once more, and her 
heart to resume, to a certain extent, its normal 
functions. She had accomplished her great coup . 
She had acted upon the brave motto “to dare and 
to do,” and she had succeeded. A curious exhila- 
ration seemed to take possession of her. The world 
io 


1 46 the PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 

was before her, and she had her liberty. She might 
live her own life now, as Anna had put it, where 
and how she pleased. It is generally supposed that 
there is no case so curious or exceptional but that its 
counterpart might be found among the thousand 
and one curious and exceptional cases that occur 
daily in London without anybody’s being the wiser 
for them. Yet I doubt if, in any other quarter of 
that vast conglomeration, a newly-married bride, 
leaving her home under similar conditions to those 
which attended our heroine’s departure, and wearing 
a similar look of elation in her tell-tale eyes concealed 
behind her gossamer veil, could have been readily 
encountered. And what was our heroine thinking of, 
as the cab rolled on its long, smooth course into the 
City? I think, if the truth must be told, the route 
she intended to take to Paris was the uppermost con- 
sideration in her mind during the first few moments of 
her flight. “Newhaven and Dieppe,” she concluded 
triumphantly. “ They will never think of that ; and 
I shall be safe in hiding at Anna’s before they have 
had time to make up their minds in what direction 
they are to look for me.” 


CHAPTER XI. 


Fortune, or perhaps one of those powers that John 
in his wild jubilation had defied, favored Portia's 
flight. Her hansom bowled her in swift safety to 
the London Bridge station, where it deposited her an 
hour before the departure of her train— which hour 
she spent waiting in an obscure corner of the ladies' 
waiting-room, with her veil down, and her heart, as 
the saying goes, in her mouth. She dared not venture 
upon the platform outside, where the hurrying crowd 
was running to and fro like ants about their nests ; 
she could not even command the resolution to make 
her way into the refreshment-room, where, despite 
her agitation of mind, she would have been glad to 
provide herself with one of the fossil Bath buns dis- 
played upon the counter (for violent emotion and a 
long hour’s drive incline to emptiness). It was in 
vain she told herself that no one would think of look- 
ing for her here, and that in so far as her chances of 
being recognised went, she had counteracted them 
effectually by merging her identity into that of the 
class of average young-lady travellers, who flit un- 

*47 


14 8 the PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 

perceived about the world with “ Come like shadows, 
so depart ” for their apparent rule of action. Con- 
science, that makes cowards of us all, made a coward 
of Portia. It seemed to her that everyone who looked 
in her direction did so with malice prepense , having 
detected the fact that she was running away from her 
home. Even the man who took the tickets eyed 
her, as she thought, with suspicion. The more 
effectually to screen herself from observation she had 
taken a second-class place, and now mounted heroi- 
cally into a second-class carriage of the order known 
as stuffy, and dissimulated herself between a fat 
French priest and a little girl on her way to school 
in France, who spent her time in alternate fits of 
weeping and sucking oranges. 

The night was a divine one. Through the window 
of the compartment, which her fellow-travellers per- 
sisted in keeping closed, Portia could see the summer 
landscape fading into indistinctness under the waning 
twilight. By-and-by a red-gold moon swung herself 
slowly aloft through the sky. What would not Portia 
have given to be able to stop the train and walk about 
in the midst of that enchanted scene? It seemed so 
redolent of calm and repose, to breathe such “ bease,” 
as Emma had said of the coppery Claude — and 
“ bease ” appeared as far out of Portia's reach at this 
instant as the moonlit landscape itself. A thousand 
disquieting thoughts were succeeding each other in 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 


149 

her brain. A woman does not run away upon her 
wedding-day with just the kind of sensation with 
which she might start upon a personally-conducted 
circular tour, paid for by anticipation — and this was 
what our heroine was discovering to her cost. At 
one moment she would picture the scene that must 
ensue when the fact of her flight was discovered : 
Emma's guttural ejaculations, Wilmer's nervous man- 
ipulation of his monocle, John's baffled rage— she 
could imagine it all so vividly. At another she 
would ponder upon the possible consequences of her 
action. She was not at all sure that she had not 
placed herself under the ban of the “ law of the land " 
— a mysterious and vaguely-understood p'ower — nor 
that the emissary who would finally capture her 
might not turn out to be a policeman. Then, what 
would Anna say ? And how long would it be before 
her hiding-place in Paris could be discovered ? This 
last reflection diverted her mind from dwelling upon 
the consternation her flight would necessarily arouse 
in the home-circle. It is well known that in cases of 
family separation the person who goes among fresh 
surroundings has less time and less opportunity for 
fretting than the friends who are left behind. Such 
importance, indeed, do we attach to the considering 
and sustaining (to say nothing of the detaching in- 
fluence) of new surroundings, that even when the 
destination of the voyager is that unknown country 


1 50 the PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 

from whose bourne no traveller returns, we think our- 
selves warranted in saying, with a shake of the head : 
“ Ah ! it is not he who is to be pitied, poor fellow ! 
It is those he is leaving behind. ” 

Portia thought of this fact in connection with her 
own experience. The excitement of the journey, the 
having a definite object in view, a place where she 
might be sure of a welcome awaiting her, made her 
position a very different one from that of the friends 
she was leaving in ignorance of her fate, from whose 
horizon she was vanishing without leaving a trace 
of her passage or a clue to her possible whereabouts. 
She promised herself that she would let them have 
news through Eliza as soon as she could do so with 
safety. Mary and her baby were also much in her 
thoughts. The mystery of the coincidence that had 
inspired her with her first presentiment in connection 
with them, through Harry Tolhurst’s agency, recurred 
to her mind. The Madonna picture had faded away, 
but the vision of the prototype of that Madonna, weep- 
ing over her shattered life, with her baby at her breast, 
had taken its place. A horror of the man she called 
her husband was Portia’s next feeling. “I am glad 
I left the opal ring he gave me where Emma will see 
it and take it to him,” she thought; “ that and the 
wedding-ring will speak more plainly than any 
reproaches I could have made him.” 

What John would do was, however, beyond her 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 15 1 

power to divine. She pondered so much upon this 
question, and so many complicated problems seemed 
to spring out of it as regarded the claim Mary had 
upon his affection, and the extent to which it would 
be justifiable to force him to marry her (if such a thing 
were possible) after his own inclination towards her 
had died out, that she lost herself in the labyrinth. 
If, as physiologists tell us, the amount of thinking 
we go through increases the convolutions of our 
brains, and removes us still further in the scale from 
our cousins the chimpanzees, Portias brain must 
have acquired many an added twist during her journey 
from Newhaven over the sea. Of trouble in getting 
across she had none. If railway companies and 
steamer agencies set out with the express purpose of 
facilitating flights and elopements, they could not 
render the means of accomplishing them more easy. 
The theory of swimming, or writing, or of doing any- 
thing else whatsoever “ made easy,” is nothing to 
the theory of travelling made easy as it has been 
actually carried into effect by companies ; and ex- 
cept for the fact that a traveller is occasionally 
launched into eternity, without so much as a “ by 
your leave,” through their operations, the arrange- 
ments by which they whisk us about the world, from 
London to Timbuctoo, are all, so to speak, plain 
sailing. “ They must think the passengers are blind 
or deaf,” thought Portia, “ to make it necessary for 


152 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 


a man to go on shouting, ‘ This way for the boat ! '* 
all the time — as if there were anywhere else to go to, 
if one wanted.” Arrived on board, she had the cour- 
age to descend to the second-cass ladies’ cabin, but 
not the courage to remain there. The elaborate pre- 
parations that the majority of the inmates were mak- 
ing for the worst, together with the ostentatious dis- 
play of unbreakable basins on the berths, was a 
spectacle before which she shuddered and fled. 
In return for a handsome pourboire, a French steward 
placed a mattress and a pillow for her on the deck, 
and there, with the moon’s rays casting their silvery 
radiance over her, this bride of a day laid herself 
down to sleep. It was by no means the first time 
she had slept thus, under the stars. She had known 
in olden times the joys of camping-out in the Austra- 
lian bush, when Wilmer had allowed her to accom- 
pany him upon a mustering expedition to a distant 
part of the run. She knew the exhilaration of waking 
in the cool morning, with the vast blue dome of the 
far-reaching Australian sky for her only canopy, and 
the wondrous chant of the native magpie, wild and 
sweet as the bush itself, to usher in her morning 
visions. She had built many an innocent castle-in- 
the-air in those far-away childish days. But in none 
of them had she seen herself lying solitary under 
the starlit sky on her wedding-night. Now she had 
no longer anything to fear, she lifted her veil, and 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 


J 5 3 

allowed the cool moist air — “ charge de sels et 
d’aromes,” as the enigmatic Verlaine has it— to 
wander over her face. When a travelling ’Arry ap- 
proached too near, with inquisitive glances that 
spoke of “ making up to her,” she let it fall again. 
But she was not the only lady on the deck, A pal- 
pable bride, with her head on her lord’s shoulder, 
sate in an obscurer patch at some little distance from 
her. Portia felt a strange pang as she looked in the 
direction of the newly-wedded pair. The silhouette 
of the bride was vague and indefinite, yet it bore the 
stamp of a serenity blissful beyond expression. 

Our heroine, I may remark par parenthese , was 
blessed with the possession that comes first in the 
triad of good things popularly supposed to ensure our 
earthly happiness. She enjoyed (and if ever the word 
“ enjoyed ” were well applied it is in this connection) 
— she enjoyed good health. Not all the thinking she 
had done during her journey in the train could render 
her unmindful of the fact that she had had no-bun 
after all, stale or otherwise, at London Bridge station, 
and that it was a very long time since she had assisted 
at Emma’s breakfast-lunch — supposed to be a bridal 
breakfast, too, but more suggestive of a funeral feast 
of baked meats, as far as her own feelings in partak- 
ing of it were concerned. And not all her agitation 
on the score of her “escapade” could prevent her 
from thinking the fresh ham sandwiches and sweet 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 


154 

lemonade wherewith she supped on deck very nice 
indeed. She lay awake notwithstanding, listening 
to the swish swish and thump thump of screw and 
engine, until the moon was but a pale reflection of the 
golden globe that had climbed so majestically up the 
heavens a few hours ago. The pale dawn was creep- 
ing up from behind the rim of the quiet ocean. Then 
Portia fell asleep, and in her sleep she fancied she 
was walking in front of the lions' cage at the Zoo. It 
was the hour at which the beasts were to be fed, and 
the particular lion she was looking at was walking 
up and down in wild agitation, with his eyes flaming, 
his tail curling, and his mouth gaping, uttering 
hoarse and hungry howls ; she saw the food, a mass 
of raw and bleeding flesh, brought close to his cage, 
and, just as he was springing upon it wildly, she 
saw that it was withdrawn by the keeper. The rage 
of the lion thereupon was terrific to behold, and it 
seemed to Portia in her dream that it was against her- 
self that he was raging. Under the influence of the 
horrible fascination exercised upon her in her night- 
mare she was constrained to approach the cage, 
with the full certainty of being eaten in her turn ; but 
her terror was so great when she discovered that the 
lion was turning into John that she awoke. The 
boiler was letting off steam, and the lion's howls she 
had heard in her dream had been suggested by its 
hoarse roar, Her cheeks felt cold and clammy. 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 


*55 

The harbour of Dieppe, with the masts of the ships 
at anchor, and the towers of the grey cathedral 
swimming in the amber morning light, were before 
her. Another six hours, and she would be in Paris 
with Anna. 


CHAPTER XIL 


The day-journey from Dieppe to Paris, though 
infinitely more fatiguing, was not, in one sense, as 
trying to our heroine as her flight of the previous 
night. For one thing, she had had the time to review 
her position calmly ; and even after sleeping over it 
— a process which is supposed to be most efficacious 
in readjusting our mental focus — she felt that if the 
thing were to do over again, she would act in pre- 
cisely the same way ; now as the lives of most of us 
are made up of regrets that we could not have acted 
differently, this was a conclusion that could not fail 
to have a tranquillising effect. Moreover, as re- 
garded the fact of running away, the contempt that 
is born of familiarity was beginning to assert its 
reassuring influence upon her mind. She no longer 
imagined that when any of her fellow-travellers 
looked her way it must necessarily be with the set 
purpose of denouncing her to her relations, and was 
even composed enough after a while to look through 
the window of the high and jolting second-class 
carriage into which she had climbed, and to admire 

*56 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 15 7 

the landscape, after an abstracted and desultory 
fashion, in the calm, clear sunshine of a July day. 
The woods and fields, twinkling with light, reminded 
her of a newly-varnished picture. The words in 
which Mark Twain, in the Innocents Abroad , em- 
phasises the refrain, “ Oh, pleasant land of France," 
by adding * ‘ and it is a pleasant land," recurred to 
her memory, and she felt that she could fully indorse 
them. The crops were a particular source of wonder 
and delight. The sloping fields of wheat, a rippling 
expanse of pale gold set round with a garland of 
fiery poppies and sky-blue cornflowers, excited her 
admiration, I fear, even more than the grey towers 
of Rouen Cathedral, which also claimed her passing 
notice. But Portia was, as we have seen, a Bush- 
bred maiden, and she had not grown up in the midst 
of the farming operations carried on at Yarraman 
Station upon the virgin soil of Australia — so parched 
and dried up for the most part of the year, that “ elder- 
ly spinster soil" would have been a more applicable 
designation for it — to be oblivious, when she beheld 
them, of the marvels of an unbroken succession of 
fields of waving corn waiting in all their ripened glory 
for harvesting. Then there were the trees — the won- 
derful European trees — with their rich and varying 
liveries of heavy summer green, to be contrasted with 
her recollection of the gaunt Australian gums and the 
black and scraggy she-oaks she remembered. Her 


158 THE PENANCE OF PORT/ A JAMES. 

reflections upon these topics were, however, more of 
the nature of passing impressions than an actual 
exercise of her cogitative faculties, for the part that she 
herself was to play in her new surroundings was the 
consideration that was really uppermost in her mind 
most of the time. She had wisely, but not too well, as 
regarded her own comfort, taken refuge in the ladies' 
carriage, where for all society she found only two 
religieuses and an exclusive lady's-maid, with whom 
she hardly exchanged a word all the way. Arrived 
at the Gare St. Lazare, she had a momentary quailing 
in presence of the unfamiliar and somewhat formi- 
dable crowd that thronged in its vicinity. In the 
Bush, she was fully able, in the literal sense of the 
phrase, to find her way about ; but to accomplish a 
similar feat, in the slang acceptation of the words, 
and in a city like Paris, of all others, seemed quite 
another matter. There were women here, too, with 
that in their faces that dismayed her — she could not 
tell why — and the hot colour mounted to her cheeks 
upon more than one occasion as her eyes encount- 
ered behind her veil those of some Frenchman who 
was trying to devisager her (the fact that we have no 
equivalent for the word in English is a proof that the 
habit is more of a Continental than an insular one). 
It was with a sigh of relief that she deposited her- 
self at last, with rugs and valise, in the petite voiture 
that was to drive her to the Rue Vaugirard. Was it 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 


159 

fancy, or had the cocker in the polished white bell- 
topper, to whom she had just confided herself, really 
intended to leer at her with insolent meaning as she 
gave him the address? The idea was such a dis- 
quieting one that she stopped him before they had 
rolled many yards to inquire of him, in timid Aus- 
tralian-French, whether he had understood where he 
was to take her. The cocker replied, “ Parfaite- 
ment,” with a shrug and in a testy tone of voice, as 
though he had been annoyed by her asking ; but 
this was so much more reassuring than his previous 
way of conducting himself, that Portia began to 
think she must have misjudged him after all, and 
that her first impression was the result of pure 
nervousness. 

It was not the first time that our heroine had been 
in Paris. She had been brought thither, as we have 
seen, only a fortnight ago, for the solemn purpose of 
making choice of her going-away bonnet. The 
difference between that mission and her actual one 
was not less great than the difference between the 
Paris she had known then and the Paris she wa9 to 
come into contact with now. During her former 
visit she had stayed at the Hotel Continental, and 
had seen from her windows the same trim and 
beautiful portion of the Tuileries gardens opposite, 
as the deposed Queen Zara, in Daudet’s Rots en Exil, 
saw the morning after her hasty arrival. The Paris 


1 60 THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES.\ 


she had known then had been that glittering surface 
of the great city which draws to itself the rich, the 
young, the gay, and the pleasure-loving of all the 
nations upon earth. It was the Paris of the grands 
boulevards , the Theatre Frangais, the Opera, Brebants, 
and the Palais Royal. From her short experience 
of it, Portia had gathered the impression that exist- 
ence here meant being steeped to the neck in every 
kind of agreeable and delightful sensation. She had 
a clear remembrance of sitting under the awning of 
a well-know cafe on the Boulevard Poissoniere with 
Wilmer and John, eating sorbets , and of looking 
across the intensely interesting crowd of carriages 
and pedestrians that streamed past her, to the houses 
on the opposite side. How grandly high they rose 
above the topmost boughs of the beautiful limes and 
chestnuts and sycamores standing in front of them, 
and what a gay surface of golden letters picked out 
on a soft grey background they presented to her 
gaze. Many different families, people of all ranks 
and callings, she had been told, dwelt in layers in 
these marvellous habitations, sinking in the social 
scale as they rose in the architectural one ; but she 
could hardly realise this fact. Like the hero in 
Thackeray’s sketch in the little dinner at Timmins’s, 
who imagined that the pastry-cooks’ young ladies at 
whose shrine, or, rather, at whose counter, he wor- 
shipped, must be nurtured upon the most delicate of 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 161 

intangible dainties, upon whiffs and emanations of 
creams and jellies, she could not help connecting 
the mingled perfumes she was conscious of — those 
of the hyacinth-laden flower-cart that passed along 
in front of her, of the patchouli-scented cocolte (whom 
she took for a charming lady) seated next to her, of 
the sauce piquante that was being fabricated in the 
kitchen of a celebrated restaurant at hand — with the 
lives of the dwellers in these enchanted regions. 
The atmosphere they lived in harmonised with the 
brilliancy of their surroundings. For Portia they 
were all part of a brilliant show. The whole of 
Paris, indeed, presented itself to her mind, so far, in 
the guise of a grand theatrical display, and the 
thought of living in it as Anna's guest took no more 
definite shape than that of helping to swell the 
pageant as she had done before, by driving to the 
Bois, along the Champs Elysees, or sitting in front of 
the Cafe Riche or the Maison Dore, or making pur- 
chases in one of those wonderful shops with the 
delicately-painted ceilings, where the dame or 
demoiselle de magasin would serve her with the most 
exquisite urbanity, and show her the loveliest 
dernieres creations , maintaining at the same time her 
own right of pronouncing the final verdict — “Voila 
ce qu'il faut pour Mademoiselle ” — with an inflexible 
calmness of conviction against which it would have 
been futile to protest. 


n 


1 62 the PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 

This Paris of Portia's recollection was but a limited 
Paris, after all. Nevertheless, it is the only one of 
which the majority of her sex placed under similar 
circumstances have much knowledge. For the first 
part of her drive there was nothing to dispel her 
illusions. The cab drove down the asphalted Rue de 
Richelieu, and across the narrow and crowded Rue 
St. Honore, coming, however, to a standstill in the 
Rue de Rivoli, where the driver sacred at having to 
back before a tremendous Crichy-Odeon omnibus, 
with its three white classic steeds, worthy of figuring 
upon a Pompeian frieze, harnessed abreast. When 
the omnibus had gone on its way she found herself 
rattled, with much clatter, across the stony Place de 
Carrousel, whence she could discern ahead of her, 
to the right, the lower portion of the skeleton frame- 
work of the mighty Eiffel Tower, then in process of 
construction. The thick mass of foliage in the 
Tuileries Gardens, and the ascending perspective of 
the Champs Elysees, with its double rows of trees 
and its moving mass of carriages, evoked familiar 
memories. It was not until the cocker had driven 
her across the Pont des Arts, and was whipping his 
horse up the Rue de Seine in a fashion which led her 
to remonstrate with him in reckless French, that her 
surroundings began to wear an unfamiliar aspect. 
Once, and only once, had Portia crossed the river 
before — upon the occasion of her accompanying 


The pehanCE of portiA jaMes. 163 

Emma upon a shopping expedition to the Bon 
Marche. The old part of Paris; that no Cook’s tourist 
would be allowed to neglect — Notre-Dame, the Tour 
St. -Jacques, the Pantheon, the Luxembourg — were all 
unknown to her. The Quartier Latin was terra 
incognita. The appearance of the Boulevard St.- 
Germain raised the temporary hope that here, 
perhaps, the enchanted region would begin to 
unfold itself once more ; but, as the cab continued its 
jolting away up the stony Rue de Rennes, the hope died 
gradually away. If she had an objection to formulate 
to this part of Paris it was on the score of its being 
so noisy. Omnibuses came thundering along with 
a rackety sound that seemed to go through her head. 
Carts and carriages rattled over the stones with an 
aggressive and deafening clatter. How people 
carried on the business of life — above all, how they 
carried on any kind of connected conversation in the 
midst of such a din, was a mystery, No wonder 
they bawled and squalled when they spoke to each 
other. And as though they did not get share enough 
of the noise indoors, they seemed to carry on the 
greater part of their business outside. How different 
were the magasins from those she remembered on 
the grands boulevards. Their contents seemed to 
sprawl not only “all over the shop,” but all over the 
pavement as well. Even the mantles and costumes 
were displayed upon portly wicker presentments of 


164 the penance of Portia james, 

the feminine form ranged in the street outside, and 
groceries, crockery-ware, and market produce of all 
kinds overflowed upon the trottoir . 

Portia was a little tired. The reaction following 
upon her exciting experiences of the last four-and- 
twenty hours was exerting its depressing influence. 
The noise, the heat, the dust, and the glare oppressed 
her, and though she had remained dry-eyed as a 
Medusa under all the emotions consequent upon her 
marriage and her subsequent flight from her home, I 
will not answer for it that as the cab drew up in front 
of a shabby wooden door, opening upon a paved 
courtyard, wherein a fat, hard-eyed woman, white- 
jacketed and blue-aproned, sat shelling peas, she did 
not feel a kind of unreasoning inclination to shed a 
desolate tear or two. 

“Mademoiselle Ross?” she inquired timidly, as 
she entered the yard with her valise and her rugs, 
after she had submissively handed to the cocker the 
five francs he claimed from her — the last that re- 
mained out of the pound she had changed at Dieppe. 
She was perfectly aware that the man had cheated 
her; but how was she to defend herself against extor- 
tionate charges in an unfamiliar tongue? 

“Mademoiselle Ross est sortie,” said the woman, 
shortly. And now there could be no longer any con- 
cealment of the humiliating fact. It was an actual 
tear — just such a one as she had shed the first night 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. l 65 

it had happened to her to sleep away from home as 
a little girl — that was trembling on her lashes and 
forcing its way down her cheek. The house in which 
Anna lived was a so-called maison de dernere, and to 
Portia's unaccustomed eyes it looked sadly shabby. 
It was very tall — at least five or six storeys high, she 
thought — and the windows upon each storey were 
as large as those at a photographer's. In the centre 
of the yard, in front, was a small railed-round garden, 
poor as regarded its blooms, but rich in the posses- 
sion of a drooping mountain ash, with berry-hung 
branches that swept the ground. This tree gave the 
only relieving touch, in Portia's eyes, to the dismal- 
ness of the scene. She remembered that Anna had 
promised to give her the liberty of her rooms should 
she appear unexpectedly upon the scene, and that it 
was an understood thing that the key should be left 
for her with the concierge. But the woman eyed her 
with such sharp curiosity, and there was so little sym- 
pathy expressed in her hard face, that our heroine 
lost countenance. It was only the desperation of her 
case that emboldened her to ask as best she could at 
what time Mademoiselle Ross might be expected to 
return. 

“Ne m'a pas dit,” muttered the woman, indif- 
ferently. 

Then Portia bethought herself of taking a visiting- 
card from her pocket and showing it, after reading 


1 66 the PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 

which the concierge, holding up her peas in her 
apron, went grudgingly into the lower room of a 
building near the entrance, and returned with the key. 
This room, from the cursory glance that Portia be- 
stowed upon it, appeared to serve in the threefold 
capacity of kitchen, bedroom, and dwelling-room, 
and to be equally trim and tidy in all three. In hand- 
ing her the key, the woman informed her briefly, 
“Au quatrieme premiere porte en face — et tournez 
deux fois la clef,” nodding meanwhile in the direction 
of the tall, prison-like house on the other side of the 
court. “Au quatrieme” and “ premiere porte en 
face ! ” — the words meant nothing to the person to 
whom they were addressed. Yet rather than run the 
risk of again exciting the displeasure of the concierge, 
who she felt for some reason or other manifestly dis- 
liked and distrusted her, Portia made her way unaided 
towards the door that had been pointed out to her, 
and, finding herself at the foot of a carpetless, sombre, 
not over-clean, and somewhat steep winding stair- 
case, began to climb the same, valiantly dragging as 
best she could, her valise and her rugs up with her. 
Arrived at the second landing she was fain to sit down 
to rest. The whole experience seemed like a hideous 
dream. Where, upon this gloomy, prison-like flight 
of stairs, could be the door that opened into her friend’s 
abode ? Sitting wearily on a step upon the landing, 
and reflecting that there was nothing for it but to re- 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 167 

trace her tired steps again (only, could she dare to 
leave her portmanteau and her rugs unprotected on 
the staircase ?), Portia was just about to descend once 
more, when a door behind her was opened, and a 
young man, wearing corduroy trousers and a plum- 
coloured, close fitting jersey that sat easily upon his 
well-knit figure, emerged from it. A glance was suf- 
ficient to prove to Portia that she was in the presence 
of a gentleman. The intruder would have bowed 
and gone past her, but something helpless and plead- 
ing in her manner of returning the salutation made 
him pause. 

“Are you going higher ? " he asked her in English. 
“ Pray let me help you up with your things/' 

“I am looking for Miss Ross/' said Portia. She 
had accepted his help as naturally as he had offered 
it. “I don't know where to find her rooms. She 
left the key for me with'her concierge ” — producing it 
as she spoke. “I am her friend, you know." 

It seemed to her that some explanation was due 
for thus descending (or rather, ascending) upon an- 
other person's abode in her absence ; but her new 
acquaintance seemed to regard the proceeding as 
perfectly en regie . 

“That is all right," he said. “She is two etages 
higher." And he began to precede her up the stair- 
case, carrying her valise and the bundle, 


1 68 the PENANCE OF PORTIA J AMES , i 

“Oh, I can’t think of letting you take so much 
trouble,” protested Portia, toiling after him. 

“ No trouble at all,” he laughed ; “I am only sorry 
I didn’t meet you at the bottom.” 

He was a young man, and he had a pleasant face : 
such a face as may be seen among the crew of a 
University eight, or the members of a cricket team at 
Lord’s, with the refined jaw and well-trained muscles 
— facial as well as bodily — that speak of much men- 
tal and physical training. He apologised for going 
in front, on the ground of having to show his com- 
panion the way, and it was he who placed the key, 
after what seemed to Portia an interminable climb, 
in the door for her, when they arrived eventually in 
front of Anna’s room, and who gave her a practical 
illustration of what the “deux fois tourner ” signified. 
He even carried her things unasked inside, and, see- 
ing a huge tin water-jug standing empty at the en- 
trance, took it up with the remark, “ They have for- 
gotten to leave you any water, I see,” and was off 
and down the stairs and out of sight before Portia, 
in her bewilderment, had found any words in which 
to remonstrate with him. While he was away she 
took a hasty glance round the apartment. The first 
rapid impression it conveyed was one of new per- 
plexity, and there had been so much to perplex her 
already. It was large. Portia, in common with her 
sex, was no appraiser of proportions, but it was what 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 169 

she would have called a fairly big room, and it was 
high — -higher than any of the rooms, not excepting 
the picture-gallery itself, in the Kensington mansion. 
There was a faded blue curtain slung across one end, 
behind an opening in which she could discern a 
camp bedstead, a washing-stand, and a wardrobe. 
The other part of the room seemed to serve as a sit- 
ting-room and studio combined — to say nothing of 
eating and cooking-room as well. There was, never- 
theless, something attractive in its general aspect. The 
floor was of stained wood, with Turkey carpets and 
rugs scattered about it. There was a piano on one 
side and book-shelves on the other. Upon a low 
table, in the neighbourhood of a large easel stood a 
Benares vase filled with peonies in full bloom, with 
petals that looked like frayed rose-colored silk. There 
were some royal stuffs— Portia did not know of what 
description — thrown across a low canopy. In one 
corner was a red crock, out of which the end of a 
loaf as long as an umbrella was protruding. Against 
the walls were pinned or nailed all manner of paint- 
ings, drawings, and sketches. Some of these were 
charcoal studies from the nude, and to Portia, who 
did not as yet know the meaning of “ Academies,” 
they conveyed a startling and almost terrifying im- 
pression. She was still standing with the uneasy 
air of one who does not know what to make of her 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 


170 

surroundings, when her gentleman-help returned, 
with the jug filled to the brim. 

“They pretend its eau sur tons les e/ages,” he re- 
marked parenthetically as he set it down ; “but it's 
humbug, one always has to go to the premiere for it. 
Now ; is there nothing else I can do for you ? ” 

“No, indeed ; and I can’t thank you enough,” de- 
clared Portia, earnestly. 

She had come out upon the landing, and with her 
veil thrown back, her face a little burned by the sun, 
and her eyes enlarged, by fatigue and excitement, 
looked even more striking than of custom. 

“You know Miss Ross, I suppose,” she asked 
hesitatingly. 

“I’ve known her since I moved into the atelier be- 
low. I have a studio here with a friend, and we go 
into her rooms sometimes — he and I — in the even- 
ing, when we’re feeling down about our work.” 

“About your work?” repeated Portia, interroga- 
tively. 

“Yes; we get discouraged sometimes, and we 
make each other worse. Then we go to Anna Ross. 
You may be sure of hearing the truth from her — about 
that and everything else. She’s great fun, too, don’t 
you think ? Are you going to work with her ? ” 

“ Oh no ; I don’t think so; I can’t draw even,” 
said Portia ; and, confused by the recollection of all 
she had seen in her friend’s room she half extended 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 171 

her hand in token of farewell. “I'll tell Anna how 
you came to my assistance." 

“Oh, we're always assisting each other in this 
community," he laughed. “Tell Miss Ross I'm ex- 
pecting my friend over in a few weeks ; but that I 
shall be very lonely until he comes. You won't for- 
get, will you, to impress that fact upon her?" 

“No," replied Portia, diffidently. She was con- 
scious that she was blushing, and both the fact and 
the consciousness of it were equally annoying to 
her. The result of her annoyance was that she with- 
drew her hand, and bestowed a stiff little bow upon 
her gentleman-help, as he turned to descend the 
staircase, instead of the cordial hand-shake with 
which she had felt impelled a moment ago to mark 
her sense of her gratitude towards him. 


CHAPTER XIII. 


An hour later, after Portia had performed her ablu- 
tions with the aid of the water brought her by her 
self-constituted help (it was the famous eau de la 
Vanne, as pure and soft as freshly-fallen rain), and 
had seated herself with a towel around her shoulders 
for the further refreshment of a brushing and comb- 
ing of her beautiful hair, streaming in undulating pro- 
fusion down her back, she was aware of a step com- 
ing up the stairs with a slow pounding footfall that 
seemed to denote that the owner of it was very tired, 
but refused to acknowledge the fact. It must be 
Anna, she reflected, straighteningherself expectantly 
upon her chair ; and Anna it was in truth. Before 
the friends meet, however, it may be as well to in- 
form the reader, in two words, who and what this 
acquaintance of our heroine's was. 

She was noi in any case what the French call la 
premiere venue , for in her person, as in her mind, 
Anna Ross possessed a strange and strongly marked 
individuality. Scientific people declared her to be 
simply a curious instance of atavism. Belonging to 

172 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA /AMES. 173 

a good English county family of the most approved, 
fair-skinned, conventional, Church-and-State-respect- 
ing type, she had performed at a very early age the 
feat known in equine metaphor as that of “ kicking 
over the traces.” Not all the combined influences of 
family, county, Church and State, pressing with their 
united force upon this one little rebel could force her 
into the mould — a very bed of Procrustes in its way 
— that social usage had prepared for her. Her very 
appearance — her sisters were all of the blonde and 
lymphatic type — was a kind of defiance hurled at her 
progenitors. Even in her childish days it was im- 
possible to look at her without thinking of an Indian 
squaw — if one could imagine such a thing as an in- 
tellectual squaw — and the likeness seemed to become 
more accentuated as she grew older. There was the 
coarse, jet-black, heavy hair, growing low upon a 
narrow forehead, and parting naturally in the middle ; 
there was the high cheekbones and the unmistakable 
aquiline nose ; there were the black eyes that con- 
tracted, all unconsciously, into a narrowing line 
when their owner was interested or excited ; and, to 
to crown all, there was the swarthy, un-English skin. 
The lips in repose said little. Their prevailing ex- 
pression was one of strongly exercised self-repres- 
sion. They could bend into curves that were both 
tender and cruel as occasion demanded. The figure 
was of the supple, untrammelled order — not tall and 


174 tub penance of popti a James. , 

not daintily waisted, but flexible and muscular. It 
was known that on the mother’s side Anna descended 
in a direct line from an English officer who had 
fought in the war with America, and who had con- 
tracted an alliance a la mode du pays , with a Chock- 
taw or Chickasaw belle. On his return to England 
he had been accompanied by a strange-eyed little 
girl, to whom he had given the name and privileges 
of a daughter, and who certainly resembled him suffi- 
ciently to warrant the appellation. It had been sup- 
posed, however, at the end of several generations, 
of which each succeeding one had grown fairer and 
more English than the last, that the alloy of savage 
blood must now have had filtering enough through 
English veins to prevent the risk of any such catas- 
trophe occurring as that known to breeders as a 
“ throw back,” when Anna’s disconcerting identity 
set all these calculations at naught From her baby- 
hood she remained a thorn in the side of her family, 
and as soon as she reached woman’s estate she left 
her home for good. The pittance she received from 
her relatives, who strongly condemned her course 
of life, was just sufficient to relieve their consciences 
from the stigma of allowing her to die of starvation. 
She earned, however, a little by her brush In age 
she might have been anything between five-and- 
tw r enty and five-and- thirty. The contrast of her 
black hair and eyes with her sallow skin, and a 


THE PENANCE OP PORTIA JAMES . 175 

certain undefinable magnetic attraction that she 
possessed to a remarkable degree, caused her to be a 
good deal noticed when she walked in the streets of 
Paris. She wore a masculine jacket, with a dark hat 
and veil, and a close-fitting short skirt in all seasons. 
Her hands and feet were models. They were, in- 
deed, the only points in connection with her personal 
appearance upon which she might be said to display 
the smallest symptoms of coquetry. Indifference 
and stolidity were the qualities she aimed at cultivat- 
ing outwardly, and she was rarely betrayed into 
manifesting the least token of pleasure or surprise. 

This, as she appeared to the outside world, was the 
young woman who now opened the door of the studio 
where Portia was seated. In her right hand she 
carried a paper bag that obviously contained butter. 
In her left, her paint-box, a three-legged folding- 
stool, and an immense bunch of freshly gathered pop- 
pies. Upon beholding her visitor her black brows 
showed a transitory, almost imperceptible elevation. 

“I thought it might be you,” she said ; “the con- 
cierge told me ‘ une demoiselle ' had taken the key. 
No,” as Portia rose to greet her, “don't speak to me 
till I have put the butter into water.” 

She swept past, and dived under a cupboard for a 
crock of water, into which she tossed her butter. 
Then scooping up a handful of rock-salt from a 
receptacle at hand, she scattered it over the contents. 


176 the PENANCE OF PORTIA J AMES . 

Her eyes travelled over the crock containing the loaf. 
“Mice again! ’ she said briefly; “I must give 
them another dose. I hate myself for doing it, but 
Rousky says they’re in a very low stage of develop- 
ment as mice, and it’s only helping them on to 
something better. I’m not sure, though, I should 
care to be helped on in that particular way — im- 
proved off by poison. Well ! ” she turned round to 
her visitor, “let me wish you the bien venue,” and, 
bending down, she kissed the young girl gravely 
between the eyes. Portia would have thrown her 
arms about Anna’s neck, but the latter repulsed her 
with a firm, though kindly, hand. 

“ There, sit down, my dear,” seating herself at the 
table opposite to her, and regarding her with attentive 
eyes. “You mayn’t know it, but you’re much pret- 
tier than you used to be — and, good gracious ! child, 
why didn’t you tell me you had such hair? It’s 
marvellous. I’ll make a sketch of you like that to- 
morrow — An Impenitent Magdalen. No, that wouldn’t 
do! A Potential Magdalen. Is that better? Your 
hair is wonderful — and what a colour ! Simple as you 
stand there, as the Irish say, you could make a for- 
tune as a model ; but I must have first choice. By 
the bye, I had your telegram yesterday, so I hardly 
expected you to-day. I thought your fate was sealed. 
I’m glad you thought better of it at the last.” 

“I’m afraid you’ll say I thought worse of it when 


THE PENANCE OE PORTIA JAMES. 


1 77 


you hear all,” said Portia. She essayed to speak 
lightly, but her lips were trembling visibly. “ I was 
married yesterday.” 

‘‘And you’ve managed to get rid of your husband 
already ! Bravo ! you must tell me how you did it. 
1 shouldn’t mind being married myself on those 
terms. It’s an exact illustration of what Rousky was 
saying the other night. The ideals are only perfect, 
he said, as long as they remain ideals. If you try to 
introduce facts into them you spoil them. Monarchy 
without a monarch, religion without a god, and 
marriage without a husband. That would be perfect ! 
But tell me how you did it ? ” 

“Til tell you all,” said Portia, gravely, “if you’ll 
only be serious, Anna. It’s a thing I can’t help being 
matter-of-fact about myself, for I mind it so much ; 
and then I’m matter-of-fact about most things. I 
want you to help me in two ways — to hide me away 
first, and then to advise me about what I’d better do 
next.” 

“Well, you must tell me first. Meanwhile, I’ll 
make you some tea. But don’t put your hair up on 
any account ; I want to study an effect. *’ 

She went to the broad windows and drew aside 
one of the curtains. The afternoon sun came pouring 
through the pane, scattering gilt and bronze over 
Portia’s pendent locks, and framing her head in a 

nimbus of amber light. “There, that’ll do. Now, 
12 


178 THE PENANCE OF PORTIA J AMES . 

don't stir from where you are, and you can talk on 
while I'm making the tea." 

It was pleasant to Portia to watch Anna's move- 
ments as she performed this housewifely office. Her 
hands were unlike any she had ever seen before. 
There was a deftness and celerity in their way of 
going to work that spoke of the long apprenticeship 
they must have had. Never had tea tasted so delicious 
in all her experience as this first cup of Anna's making. 
And the delicate rounds of pain de gruau spread with 
the unequalled Paris butter ! If Anna would only let 
her live altogether upon such fare as this, she would 
ask for nothing better. She felt ashamed that it should 
be possible for her to like it all so well, at the very 
moment when she was about to unfold a tale of 
wrong and error and suffering — the narrative of 
three wrecked lives, her own among the number. 
Anna, however, obliged her to speak, and it was in 
obedience to her request that she narrated from 
beginning to end the chapter of her life's history that 
we know. 


CHAPTER XIV. 


“You've done the best thing you could do under 
the circumstances," was Anna's verdict when Portia 
had come to an end of her story. “Even according 
to benighted Catholic laws I believe you would be 
able to get a divorce. And I suppose a divorce is the 
only solution of the difficulty you would care about." 

“The only one," said Portia, firmly. “I can see 
you think it was shockingly weak-minded of me to 
let myself be married at all with such a feeling as I 
had. But I used to care for John at one time — at 
least, I always believed I did. And then, how could 
I have imagined he was deceiving me? " 

“ I should not have waited for that to give him his 
conge , if I had been you. To believe one has cared 
for a person at some time or another is rather a luke- 
warm sentiment to start marriage upon, don't you 
think ? I suppose you thought if there was no great 
love in the beginning, 'heaven may decrease it upon 
better acquaintance.' Well, you are safe out of his 
reach now, at any rate ! You don't imagine they 
would ever think of looking for you here ?" 


79 


180 the PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 

“ Never ! They don't even know you are in Paris. 
But, oh ! Anna, I feel so lost I don't know what I 
am going to do." 

“ Do ! I'll find you plenty to do. Never fear. 
You’ve been nothing but a summer insect till now. I 
suppose you only thought of gadding about amusing 
yourself all the time you were in London." 

“Not much else. There was the riding in the 
morning, and sometimes in the afternoon ; and Emma 
always liked me to go shopping or visiting with her. 
And when we were not at balls, there were theatres 
or concerts. It was all pleasure from morning to 
night." 

“Well, it won't be all pleasure here, then, I can 
tell you," said Anna, grimly. “At least, not that 
kind of pleasure — though, for the matter of that, such 
a life as you have been describing would be hateful 
to me." 

“I was getting a little tired of it too," admitted 
Portia. “It was awfully nice, but somehow it 
always seemed to lead to nothing." 

“You may say that of existence altogether, as 
Rousky does," put in Anna. 

“Who is the Rousky you are always quoting?" 
asked Portia. “ Last time I saw you it was a Wilu- 
ski who was the oracle. You used to tell me so 
much about his ideas." 

“Did I?" There was a momentary inexplicable 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA Jam ax 181 

gleam in Anna’s black eyes, accompanied by an enig- 
matic half smile, more sardonic than mirthful. “I 
had forgotten. It must be some time back. I don’t 
know where Wiluski is now. But to come back to 
your own affairs. I can’t faire des phrases — I never 
could ; but you had better know, once for all, that I 
consider your coming to me about the most gratify- 
ing compliment you could have paid me. You are 
going to let me be responsible for you for the present ? 
I should like to teach you how to depend upon your- 
self a little, so that you won’t risk marrying only for 
the sake of pleasing other people another time. You 
haven’t brought any money with you, I hope ? ” 

“N — no ; a few pounds only.” 

4 4 It’s more than you want. If you had come as 
a rich person I shouldn’t have let you stay. We don’t 
admit riches here. We don’t tolerate the epicier ele- 
ment among us, excepting when we have a picture 
to sell. You’ll be able to earn as much money as 
you need.” 

“I earn money!” exclaimed Portia, with shame- 
faced pleasure in her looks. ‘ ‘ I never earned a penny 
in my life. I shouldn’t know how ! ” 

“ Then it’s more than time you began. You may 
pose for the tete d expression first of all, and for your 
hair, and your neck, and your arms, etpuis nous verrons ! 
It’s tiring work at first ; but you’ll get into it. And 
now I must clear out a corner of the atelier for you 


1 82 the PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 

to sleep in to-night. To-morrow we can find a room 
somewhere, if you’re not comfortable. And you’ll 
have to come to dinner with me at Clootz’s to-night. 
It’s quite close at hand.” 

“Whatever you like,” assented Portia. She had 
put herself entirely into Anna’s hands, and was per- 
fectly content to abide by her decision in all things ; 
to surrender to her even that newly-found liberty 
which she had deemed it so great a privilege to ob- 
tain. It was a relief under the present circumstances 
to be saved from the responsibility of thinking and 
acting for herself. As for measuring the distance that 
separated Anna’s way of living from the way in which 

Wilmer and Emma lived — the way in which she 
herself and all the Kensington household had lived 
as well — these were considerations that could have 
no kind of weight with her. Portia’s mind was of a 
plastic mould, and she was still at a plastic age. To 
find herself in a luxurious English home one day, 
and to have to share a single room on a Paris qua - 
irieme with a friend the next, was a contrast of which 
she was more likely to see the amusing than the in- 
convenient side. When she found that Anna pos- 
sessed a tub, and that the antagonistic concierge filled 
it nightly with the beautiful eau de la Vanne ; also that 
she might hire a similar luxury for herself, all mis- 
givings as regarded her new local were done away 
with, Anna, moreover, was a woman of fertile con- 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 183 

trivances. To see her transform a cumbersome-look- 
ing easy-chair into a couch and wheel it behind the 
faded blue curtain, whisk off an extra mattress from 
her camp bedstead and place it upon the couch, un- 
strap Portia's rugs and arrange the coverlet and pil- 
lows comfortably thereupon ; clear out drawers and 
placards for her to put her things into, set the fast- 
dropping poppies in water and shake them out into 
the full display of their crimson glories, wash up the 
cups and saucers, and sprinkle her charcoal sketches 
with fixatif before putting them by in her portfolio, 
was to be impressed anew with a profound sense of 
her neat-handedness and orderliness. In this, at 
least, she showed none of the ancestral tendencies ; or 
possibly the military precision of the husband of the 
squaw had counteracted in his descendants the laisser- 
aller principle of savage races as regards domestic 
arrangements. 

“I'm doing nothing to help you," said Portia, at 
last. She had been partly gazing out of the window 
into the courtyard below, that looked a terrific way 
down, partly watching her friend's operations in naive 
and wondering admiration. “You should give me 
something to do, Anna." 

“ Oh ; you must be content to fill a decorative role 
for to-day. You'll have all your work cut out for you 
soon, I can tell you. Now I'm going to do your hair 
for you as 1 like it ” 


184 THE PENANCE OF PORTIA J. AMES . 

And to this also Portia submitted, and gratefully 
And by the time the red-gold coil was twisted in Cin- 
galese fashion behind her head, where, to her aston- 
ishment, Anna fixed it with a solitary silver arrow, 
it was time to go to dinner. 

“ You needn’t put on your cloak,” Anna told her ; 
and Portia, all unconscious that her friend had designs 
of showing her off, submissively did as she was 
ordered. Descending the four flights of stairs and 
passing through the courtyard, where they did not 
meet a soul, Anna conducted her through unknown 
streets to Clootz’s. 

This famous restaurant to which Portia was intro- 
duced was of a kind much frequented by students and 
artists of the Quartier Latin, those who were ranged 
in the category of les petites bourses. In later days 
they would probably refer to Clootz’s as “ une gar- 
gote ” ; but in their actual necessitous days — before 
they had, in their own vocabulary, “ arrived ” — they 
were very glad to assemble at the small tables in the 
small, smoke-filled dining-room — at one end of which 
the restaurateur and his wife carried on their cooking 
operations in full view of the customers — and there 
dine off a potage and the plat du jour , or some similar 
luxury, for the not too extortionate sum of one franc 
or a franc and a half, with occasional credit for the 
same when funds were low. English and American 
artists of both sexes favoured Clootz’s. The fare, to 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA /AMES. 185 

be sure, was not very delicate, but the “portions” 
were more liberal than at a Duval's, and the publicity 
of the cooking- was a guarantee against the harbour- 
ing of sundry dark suspicions that are apt to trouble the 
appetites of the frequenters of one-franc restaurants. 
Besides which, there was always the option of dining 
a la carte — a person with extravagant tastes and an 
inordinate appetite might spend from three to four 
francs at Clootzs— and for an extra halfpenny you 
might have a clean cloth to cover the stained marble 
in front of you. There was only room for four people 
at each table, and even so the fit was rather a tight 
one. But anybody who was an habitue was sure to 
encounter friends enough at Clootzs to make up a 
table of his own ; and in that case it was an advan- 
tage to make exchanges of half-plates of petits pots 
or flageolets with one’s neighbours, by which means 
you were enabled to vary the menu , and have quite a 
number of different plats for your twenty or five-and- 
twenty sous. 

Portia had been to the Maison Dore,and had dined 
at the Continental and the Grand Hotel, but she had 
never seen a restaurant of this kind before. She tried 
not to think that it was rather “ awful” (though this, 

I fear, was the adjective that would have most nearly 
expressed her secret feelings) as she followed her 
friend up the crowded room to a table near the cook- 
ing end, where the restaurateur — a fat Alsacien, in a 


1 86 the PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 

white paper cap — was shaking potatoes in a frying- 
pan over his stove. Seated next to Anna, she saw 
that people were looking round at them in various 
directions, and that here and there a head would bow 
recognition. The atmosphere was impregnated with 
cigar-smoke, and one did not require to be a con- 
noisseur, any more than Portia was, to feel (as she 
did) that it had not the fragrance of the atmosphere 
she had been accustomed to when Wilmer and his 
friends were smoking. Anna acknowledged the vari- 
ous bows she received by stately little nods. She 
had turned back her veil square across her forehead, 
and, sitting in the shade, in her masculine jacket, with 
her jet-black hair, her sallow skin, and the curious con- 
tour of her face, bore an odd resemblance to the effigy 
of an Egyptian Pharaoh as handed down to us in the 
paintings on some old-world sarcophagus. After a 
time Portia became aware that somebody was bow r - 
ing to her, and for an instant her heart stood still. 
But it was only her “ gentleman-help/' seated among 
a group with whom he was engaged in an apparently 
animated discussion. His bow T in her direction 
caused the others to look at her for the first time, and, 
placed as she was, she could not help being conscious 
that they were asking him questions about her. 

Anna, meanwhile, had been giving her orders to 
the garfon , a country-bred youth fresh from his pays , 
with a face as unlike the cynical mask of the typical 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA J AMES . 187 

garqon as possible. Bouillon with a powdering of 
fromage rape , tete de veau a I'huile , haricots verts, and 
crarce suisse, composed the menu she submitted grave- 
ly to her companion's approval. Portia declared her 
readiness to like whatever Anna did. Her tastes were 
eclectic — a consequence, no doubt, of that plasticity 
of temperament and of age already referred to, which 
was one of her prominent qualities. She persuaded 
herself therefore, that the better portion of the ear of 
a cold calf's-head, soused in oil, and plentifully be- 
sprinkled with chopped onions, was the most delect- 
able diet in the world, and was only sorry she could 
not honestly like the vin ordmaire , that seemed to 
have such a taste of ink, which Anna continued to 
press upon her. 

Between the intervals that followed the arrival of 
the “portions” (and they were very long ones, the 
country-bred garfon being the only aid that the res- 
taurateur and his wife allowed themselves), Portia 
learned a good deal respecting the company at 
Clootz’s. Her “ gentleman-help ” had had, it seemed, 
a landscape in the Salon. He had colour, but was no 
draughtsman, and would have to “piocher” a good 
deal, in Anna's opinion, before he could come to the 
front. The group he was with was made up of three 
American artists and one Australian. They were all 
in the atelier of Jean Paul Laurens, and one of them 
had also had a head in the Salon, of which the Figaro 


X 38 THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 

had said that it had “ des qualites remarquables. ” 
Behind them, the man with the dark beard and the 
girl with the delicately-cut face worked at the same 
studio ; you generally saw them together. The lady 
sitting alone reading the Petit Journal was an Amer- 
ican. Her line was wood-engraving. 

“And does it — does it pay them?” asked Portia, 
timidly, though she had hardly uttered the words 
before she would have liked to retract them. To 
look upon art as a means to an end, when it was so 
evidently, in Anna’s eyes, and in those of all her 
friends, the be-all and end-aW itself, was, she felt, a 
sordid and Philistinish point of view. But to her 
relief Anna answered her matter-of-fact question in 
just as matter-of-fact a way. 

“None of them are arrive yet, or they wouldn’t be 
here. Some are well on their way, though ; others 
have about as much as they can do to scrape along. 
There are not many among those you see who have 
made it pay in the sense of living by their art.” 

“But you have ? ” hazarded Portia. 

“I have — nearly,” said Anna, shortly; “but I’ve 
gone in for rather an expensive atelier. Sixty pounds 
a year — that’s what my rent comes to. My living 
costs me from two to two francs fifty a day ; then 
one has to dress in some kind of way ; and colours and 
studio expenses (I go to Laurens, too, you know) are 
pretty heavy. I sold a little ‘ plein air ’ this year, 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA /AMES. 189 

though — an old woman I did on the beach at Etretat 
— so I'm in funds just now. But, see, there is Rousky 
coming. ” 

She half rose from her place, and motioned to 
Portia to remove her parasol and gloves from the place 
opposite to her, towards which the young man she 
called Rousky was making his way. As he came 
closer Portia could not refrain from casting a look of 
interested curiosity in the direction of this friend and 
oracle of Miss Ross's. Rousky was a man apparently 
under thirty years of age, with nothing in his lean 
personality and bearded face to distinguish him save 
a pair of most remarkable blue eyes, which might al- 
most have been said to kindle , in the literal sense of 
the word. They seemed, in contradiction to all opti- 
cal laws, to gather their light from within, and made 
Portia feel for an instant as though she were in the 
presence of an illuminate or a seer. His nostrils were 
somewhat wide, and his cheeks betrayed the forma- 
tion of the Kalmuck's skull. The general coloring 
was fair. The head-covering a ' 4 beret," which he 
pulled off before shaking hands with Anna and seating 
himself in the place pointed out to him. The clothes 
— a much-worn slop-suit, flannel shirt, and carelessly- 
knotted black tie. 

“This is Ivan Evarchus Rousky,” said Anna, at 
once introducing him to her companion. “Is that 
right ? ” she laughed — “ and Miss ? ” She paused, 


i 90 THE PENA MCE OE PORTIA JAMES. 

in order to give Portia time to decide by what name 
she would choose to be called, 

Rousky had turned his eyes like beacon-fires upon 
her. In obedience to a curious impulse that she could 
not account for to herself, and as though that look, 
like the very touch of Truth, could penetrate all dis- 
guises, she said simply, “ Portia, " and went on with 
her dinner. Rousky bowed, but paid no further at- 
tention to her. Anna drew a book from her coat 
pocket, printed in characters which suggested nothing 
to Portia's imagination save the “unknown tongues" 
in type, and opened it at a passage which she asked 
him to read aloud for her. 

“The Kreuzer Sonata /" he murmured, turning it 
over; his manner of pronouncing his “the" had a 
careful precision that proved his knowledge of English 
to be an acquirement of later years. His voice was 
amazingly soft. He glanced through the pages before 
reading the passage Anna had asked for, absorbing 
their contents, as it appeared, in a manner peculiar 
to himself, for all the time he was softly humming 
the refrain of “Pere la Victoire " through his closed 
lips. “Why did you choose that ? " 

“Because I've read everything else of Tolstois. 
If you don't choose to read me the passage I showed 
you, give me back the book." 

Her tone was imperious. He raised his head and 
glanced at her. She returned his look, and they had 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 191 

a passage at arms, not in words, but — mutely — with 
their eyes, exchanging glances that made Portia think 
of keen-edged swords, and electric discharges from 
thunder-clouds. By-and-by, a certain troubled ex- 
pression gathered in the black depths of Anna's eyes. 
She lowered them gently, and Rousky read aloud, in 
a language which, despite the musical cultivation of 
his voice, corresponded, to Portia's thinking, with 
the break-jaw complexity of the characters, the pas- 
sage that Anna had pointed out to him. 

The reading was followed by a conversation in 
which our heroine felt, as she owned to herself, very 
much “out of it." The names of Tolstoi, Dosto- 
ievsky, Tourguenief, and many others, about which 
they spoke, were all unknown to her. To Anna and 
her friend they seemed to furnish a topic for endless 
discussion. “ Tolstoi !" said Rousky once, with a 
shrug, “he is only a kind of neonomian ! " Where- 
upon Anna demanded that the signification of the 
word “neonomian," and its applicability to Tolstoi, 
should be expounded to her. But to do this it was 
necessary to refer to the Kreuzer Sonata once more, 
and to determine just what Tolstoi had in his mind 
when he wrote it. When they came to this part of 
their subject Rousky relapsed into French, and Anna 
answered him in the same language, so that Portia, 
notwithstanding the fact that she strained her ears 
and her brain to the uttermost, only gleaned frag- 


1 92 THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 

mentary bits of the conversation. Occasionally, 
however, she heard things which inclined her to 
surmise that perhaps, after all, it was as well that her 
powers of comprehending the whole should be so 
limited. Her mental pabulum hitherto had been of 
the milk-for-babes quality, and the kind she was 
assimilating now would have been pungent fare even 
to seasoned palates. Besides which, though Anna 
and her friend appeared very much in earnest in what 
they were talking about, they did not seem to affix 
any standard of right or wrong to the actions of the 
characters they discussed. How they would prob- 
ably have felt themselves if they had been placed 
under conditions which induced them to commit a 
murder like the hero of a book they were talking 
about was a notion, for instance, that they discussed 
quite calmly. Portia was a little shocked at this. 
She heard them characterise conduct as weak or 
strong, but never as right or wrong. Nevertheless, 
she could not help being interested in watching 
Rousky’s eyes. He did not seem to pay any heed 
to his “portion,” which Anna had ordered while he 
was speaking, and without consulting him (as though 
she knew what his preference must be beforehand), 
but talked on with the curiously illuminated look that 
had attracted Portia from the first. Hardly twenty- 
four hours since she had left her home, and into what 
a strange new world she seemed to have entered 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 


193 

already ! She could not imagine what part in it she 
should find to play. There were moments when a 
spasm of home-sickness overcame her, and she felt 
tempted to run back to England as fast as she had run 
away from it. But in England she would not be her 
own mistress. She had always understood that there 
a husband might force his wife to live with him, and 
she could not be sure that even Wilmer could protect 
her against a husband armed with legal rights. There 
was something, too, in the utter freedom of the lives 
of all these people around her that was beginning to 
exercise its fascination upon her. Each one evidently 
did as he pleased, went where he pleased, and lived 
as he pleased. There could be no Mrs. Grundy 
where people did not even acknowledge the existence 
of that formidable abstraction. After Rousky had 
finished his dinner he asked, ‘‘You will be in this 
evening ? ” 

“ We shall be in,” said Anna pointedly, glancingin 
Portias direction. “You can come up all the same ; 
and you had better bring Mr. Eames and your Polish 
friend with you, too.” 


CHAPTER XV. 


One is inclined to regret sometimes that after 
Shakespeare had drawn his inspired picture of the 
seven ages of man, he did not add thereto a similar 
presentment of the seven ages of woman. The first 
and the last of these would have been evidently the 
same for both sexes, but the intervening period — the 
one which marks the rise and decline of woman’s 
influence — the phases during which she is uncon- 
scious of her power and uses, it, or is conscious of it 
and abuses it, would have been of a very different 
kind, and might have marked a history as strange 
and eventful as that of any man “ who in his time 
plays many parts.” Maidenhood and wifehood and 
motherhood might have represented each their sep- 
arate act, fraught with at least as great a significance 
as the ages of the lover, the soldier, and the justice, 
and writers in succeeding ages would have had their 
choice of seven feminine parts to which they might 
have adapted their heroines, as well as of seven mas- 
culine parts for their heroes. In that case Portia 
might have found her place in the act which corre- 


194 


the penance of porTia James. 195 

sponds to the third age in the history of Shakspeare’s 
man. But the act would have been subdivided, in 
this instance, into many separate scenes ; and to her 
own thinking the scene of her life with Anna upon 
the quatrieme of the tall house in the Rue de Vaugirard 
would not assuredly have been one of the least 
strange. 

She had been nearly a week under the shelter of 
her friend’s roof when we see her sitting alone, with 
a letter from her husband in her hand, enclosed 
under cover of a missive from her faithful Eliza. 
Anna had gone to market, bidding her, as she left 
the room, be ready to accompany her on her return 
to the studio of a famous painter, where Portia was 
to begin her apprenticeship to the career of a model. 
The place was steeped in the calm, warm atmos- 
phere of eight o’clock in the morning, under an 
August sky ; and the distant noises from outside — 
the rumbling of the great omnibuses, the crashing oT 
the carts and carriages, the strident street-cries — 
among which the “ Marchand d’ha — bi-i-i-i," with 
the long-drawn nasal prolonging of the last syllable, 
had such a dreary sound — reached her ears through 
the open window in a kind of softened cadence. 
The hour would have been considered as still very 
early in the Kensington mansion. Had it not been 
looked upon as an astonishing feat on Portia’s part 
to go to the Academy even later in the day in that 


1 96 The penance of port/a James. 

far-away time, so near as regarded the date, so 
immeasurably far as regarded her own feelings, 
when she had met Harry Tolhurst on the steps? 
Here, on the contrary, the morning seemed to be 
well on — for before eight o'clock much had already 
been done in Anna's atelier . The room had been 
done for one thing. Anna, in morning deshabille , 
with a towel twisted round her head, had swept the 
floor, while Portia had dusted and tidied. Then 
there had been the door to open five times in suc- 
cession — twice for the concierge, who brought the 
water for the tubs and came up afterwards with the 
letters ; and then for the baker’s woman, with her 
yard-long loaves ; for the milk-woman, who filled 
the can hanging to the door-handle ; and for the 
Auvergnat with the sooty face who brought the braise. 
They had breakfasted, besides, upon their usual 
meal of cafe au lait and petits pains , and Portia had 
washed up and put by the breakfast things. The 
week had gone by slowly— not that the time had 
hung heavily on her hands, for every hour had been 
charged with some new and strange experience, but 
that it seemed as though untold ages had elapsed 
since she had left her home. She had performed the 
operation known as shaking into place quickly 
enough as regarded her bodily requirements, but the 
adjusting of her mind to her new surroundings had 
not been so easy a task. If she had had a vocation 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA J AMES . 


197 

as Anna had, or passionate convictions like some of 
her friends, the untrammelled existence she was 
free to lead here would have been everything her 
heart could have desired. But she was not by any 
means sure that she possessed the necessary qualifi- 
cations for the full and proper appreciation of such a 
life. She had been, as Anna had said, a mere 
summer insect hitherto ; but her wings had been 
singed, and she had flown for refuge to a safe 
hiding-place. Nevertheless, she was still fluttering 
in imagination about the scenes she had left. She 
did not mean to hide for ever. She was quite will- 
ing in the meantime to lead the life Anna had 
mapped out for her : to sit and do model for her in 
the morning, to take long walks with her in the 
afternoon, to wander about the Luxembourg gardens 
— the quiet end of them — while Anna was at Laurens, 
to dine with her at Clootz’s, and help her make tea 
in the evening for the art-students — men and women 
who climbed to the quatrieme afterwards — to earn her 
livelihood, and to do her duty, in short, in that state 
of life to which Anna would please to call her ; but 
she could not bring herself to feel a genuine 
enthusiasm for such a career. She had the con- 
sciousness that she was only resting on her oars 
after all, and that by-and-by, she would be steering 
her way again through the unknown seas beyond. 
Anna had enclosed Portia's letters to Eliza to a 


198 the PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 

London friend, who in her turn had them dropped 
into various post offices in and near London, to 
which Eliza addressed them in turn. They were 
subsequently called for by her friend and despatched 
to Paris. By this means no clue to her hiding-place 
was obtainable, and, before revealing it, Portia was 
resolved that John should give her his written 
promise to help her to untie the knot she had un- 
wittingly helped him to tie on their wedding morning. 
She had not written for the first day, in deference to 
Anna’s strongly-urged advice on the subject. 

'‘Let them be anxious,” she said. “ It won’t kill 
them, and they’ll be all the more ready to do what 
you want. “You let them have a notion where you 
are, and you’ll never bring them to terms.” Never- 
theless, Portia’s own anxiety would not let her rest, 
and before she had been fifty-six hours absent— 
fifty-six hours that had had the effect of as many 
months in their influence upon John’s outward 
appearance — Eliza had brought her mistress a note 
containing the words : 

“ Dearest Emma, — I am well and biding my time, 
leading a very peaceable existence in my hiding- 
place, and only anxious about you and Wilmer. 
When you both give me your solemn assurance that 
my marriage may be undone, or that, at any rate, I 
may go on living with you as I did when I was 
unmarried, and never see John again, I will come 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 199 

back, but not before. Pray, pray, tell me all about 
everything, and see that my birds have their fresh, 
bath every morning.” 

Portia had received a long letter in reply, wherein 
Emma had, as she would have said, ‘‘bored” out 
her heart to her sister-in-law. She had been 
inspired to recount the whole scene of the tragic 
discovery of the bride’s disappearance in redundant 
German-English — how she herself had flown to the 
conservatory (Portia could not help smiling at the 
metaphor in connection with the writer’s proportions) 
where the two gentlemen were smoking : how Wil- 
mer thought she must have put her foot upon a snake 
as she had done once in the bedroom at Yarraman, 
this being the only occasion besides the actual one 
upon which she had run outside with her hair in 
crimps. Portia smiled once more at the vision of 
Emma rushing from her apartment in casual attire 
with pellets of hair upon her bare temples — how Wil- 
mer had asked if she was “ off her chump,” and she 
had replied that she was “wholly rational”; and 
what a terrible look John had in his eyes when he saw 
her come in dressed in that fashion, with the wed- 
dingring and the opal ring in one hand and the letter 
for himself in the other. 

It did not require Emma’s assurance to make Portia 
believe that John had looked terrible. Had sh§ 


200 the PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 

not seen that very look in her dreams night after 
night since the evening of her flight, when she had 
dreamed that he was a raging lion ? The letter en- 
tered also into as coherent a description as the 
writer was able to give of the scene that had ensued 
between the baffled bridegroom and the relatives of 
the bride. Wilmer and Emma had both upbraided 
him in turn, and he had sworn that they were in a 
plot to rob him of his wife ; that they had nothing to 
do with his private concerns, and that whoever said 
he had a wife or a mistress when he married uttered a 
lie. “And he did sturmen and toben , mein Gott !” 
added Emma, with consternation in her handwriting. 
He had said he would follow his wife to the end of 
the world. Portia shuddered as she read this threat, 
But subsequent correspondence was of a more reason- 
ing kind. Wilmer had been very much vexed, his 
wife wrote, by the scandal to which Portia’s conduct 
had given rise. Already a paragraph headed, “ Elope- 
ment of a Bride on her Wedding Day,” had appeared 
in one of the papers. He was of opinion that Portia 
should have put herself under her brother’s protec- 
tion instead of running away and making herself a 
byword. “ How could I ? ” she thought at this point. 
“John would have talked him over. I had nothing 
for it but to go.” 

Such had been the nature of the correspondence 
between the runaway and her home until the sixth 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 201 

morning after her flight, which was marked by the 
advent of a letter from John himself. 

Portia trembled and turned pale as she received it 
from the hands of the concierge. Sitting in the soli- 
tude of Annas quatrieme , like Dame Malbrook on her 
“ tour,” she opened it with a heart-sinking it was vain 
to struggle against. The letter that had been warm 
under his touch but yesterday, was here in her hands 
this morning. How easily he might have come with 
his letter if he had only known. Involuntarily she 
cast a terrified glance at the door ; nobody could en- 
ter without the key, and Anna, who had it in her pos- 
session, would be the last to give it up to Portia's 
legal lord. Angered against herself, she opened the 
envelope — John wrote what is known as a commer- 
cial hand — decipherable even when he had written, 
as now, under the stress of violent emotion, and his 
words were clear to his wife's comprehension at once. 

‘ ‘ I could not write before, " the letter began. ‘ ‘ You 
have put me into the state of mind when a man puts 
a bullet into his head like nothing at all. Why have 
you acted so ? What satisfaction can it give you to 
torture me ? If you had told me what was up I could 
have explained everything. I have never loved any 
woman but you, and I never shall, to my dying day. 
Men are not like women in those ways. You think 
I was fond of that girl who came and parted us just 
^s we’$ been made man and wife ! I never cared a 


202 THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 

straw for her. If you hadn’t been twelve thousand 
miles away, and if you hadn’t sent me one or two 
letters that seemed to send a kind of a chill to my 
heart, it would never have happened. I wasn’t so 
much to blame in the matter as you might think. 
You would say so, too, if you knew a little more 
about men and the world. But you were always 
the veriest sucking-dove in those ways, and that’s 
another reason why I was so fond of you. I treated 
the girl as handsomely as I could. I’ve been send- 
ing her supplies to America — as much as she could 
want — ever since she left. It was her own fault if 
she ran away and let someone else collar the money. 
She could have lived where she pleased, and made a 
good marriage ; and as for the brat, though I’m in no 
way bound to believe what she tells me, she would 
have had no cause to complain. She only had to 
speak. What can a man do more? You wouldn’t 
have had me marry her, would you? There’s only 
one woman in the world, as you well know, I could 
ever marry — and I have married her. In the eyes 
of God and man she’s my wedded wife. Portia ! 
don’t break my heart altogether. If you want to 
kill me, take a different way of doing it. While you’re 
hiding away I am eating my heart out about you. 
You don’t know what it is to feel wild about anyone 
as I do about you, or you would have a little pity for 
me. If you will let us know where you are, I swear 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 203 

that I will explain everything to your satisfaction. 
The girl herself wants you to come back. Emma 
says you had no money when you ran away, and 
she can’t for the life of her think of any friends you 
would have cared to go to in England. Wriie, and 
make your own conditions. You don’t suppose I 
shall rest night or day till I’ve found you, so you had 
better make your terms while you’ve got the right 
end of the stick. Don’t be afraid to trust me because 
of anything that’s happened lately. 

“ What I suffered when I found you had run 
away from me is a lesson that will about last me for 
the rest of my days. I ought to have told you every- 
thing, but I was afraid. I thought I’d wait until we 
were married and you had got to know me a little 
better, though it was on the tip of my tongue to tell you 
whenl put the opal ring— that confounded ring that’s 
done all the mischief — on your finger. Don’t keep 
your hiding-place a secret any longer. It’s too rough 
on us all. Wilmer wants to see us come together again, 
too. You shall have your own way in everything. 
I care for you so much that you will always hare 
the whip-hand of me. Emma says you’ve upset all 
their plans for the autumn. They can’t go away till 
they know where you are. If you would come back 
we could all make a trip together. Perhaps you 
would prefer that to our Norway journey that you 
have knocked on the head. Wherever you may 


204 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 


be when this reaches you, my darling— for you are my 
darling, whatever happens, and the thought of you 
seems to choke me now as I write — let your heart 
move you to a little compassion for me. I am so 
abjectly miserable without you — I was never a great 
hand at letter-writing, but I could fill pages telling 
you of the different visions I have had of you lately. 
When I sit in that greenhouse of Wilmer's, with my 
eyes shut, and smell the peppermints and blue- 
gums, I declare I can see you just as you were at 
Yarraman in the old days — a dear little harum-scar- 
um girl, with your hair flying over your shoulders, 
tearing down the paddock with the kangaroo dogs at 
your heels. Who would ever have thought you were 
going to turn into such a queen of beauty and fash- 
ion then ! I've been weak and Fve been a fool. I 
won't deny it ; but if you could see into my heart 
you would believe me when I say that even when I 
was most of a fool my heart was fullest of you — 
fuller than it could hold. Now, there is God's truth 
for you, Portia ; and with the prayer that you will 
think I have been punished enough, I sign myself 
your husband, who loves you better than his life, 

“John Morrisson. " 

Portia sat with this letter in her hand, gazing ab- 
stractedly before her, until Anna came back, with 
her basket full and housewifely triumph in her tones. 
(i IVe been to the rotisserie, and you shall have 


* 2 HE PENANCE OE PORTIA JAMES. 20 $ 

poulet and salad for your lunch ; what do you think 
of that ? I met Mr. Eames and the Swedish girl on 
their way to the atelier . They are raving about the 
new model — an Italian girl. By the bye, Portia, 
what an ideal picture of Truth one might make of you, 
with your hair down ! A pity you’re so prejudiced 
still. I must show you Lefebvre’s picture at the 
Luxembourg. It makes me think of what Merimee 
said about artists’ models, and why a femme du 
monde — a beautiful one — might be treated so much 
more satisfactorily. But what is the matter ? Have 
you had bad news ? ” 

“Bad news? No.” It is doubtful whether Portia 
had heard aught of Annas words save the concluding 
ones. “Only. I feel rather as if we were playing at 
cross-questions and crooked answers with our cor- 
respondence. I’ve had a letter from John, and — and 
he thinks I’m jealous. ” 

“And you’re not ?” Anna put this question 
sharply, with her straight, black brows drawn to- 
gether over her snake-like eyes. “ Perhaps you are ? ” 

“No, indeed I’m not,” Portia answered slowly. 
“I’ve been trying to analyse my feelings ever since 
I’ve been here, and I think it’s because I don’t care 
properly for John that the feeling of jealousy had 
nothing to do with my running away. I know 
pretty well what made me do it. You see, I only 
married him because I thought he had a kind of 


20 6 the PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 

sacred claim on me. I believed he had been living 
upon my promise for years past. When I found that 
in reality he had been doing nothing of the kind, my 
own obligation was gone. Don't you see ? There 
was no longer any necessity for me to sacrifice my- 
self. Then Mary had prior claims. Hers were the 
real ones ; mine were only artificial and conventional 
ones. But John would have put them first, and at 
home they would have done the same ; just because 
we had had the marriage service said over us. I was 
afraid of that ; I could think of nothing better than 
to run away ; but now, I suppose, it is nearly time 
to come to an arrangement of some kind — to write 
and say ” 

“ Not to write and say where you are ! ” interrupted 
Anna. i( Whatever you think of doing, don't do that ! 
Let all the pourparlers be carried on by correspon- 
dence. You have everything in your favour as long 
as they don't know where to find you. You can dic- 
tate your own terms. I had hoped," she went to the 
table and began to unpack her basket, continuing to 
talk all the time she was placing her purchases upon 
plates or in jars — “I had hoped you would find 
interests here. I know it is dull work sitting to me 
in the mornings ; but that was only for practice. If 
you knew what appreciation you would have, and 
what money you might earn ! Of course, you could 
get as much money as you liked if you went back — 


THE PENANCE OP PORTIA JAMES. 207 

I know that. But that is not like earning it yourself 
and would it not be tantamount to selling yourself? 
After all, I believe you are hankering after the flesh- 
pots of Egypt, if the truth were known ! ” 

4 ‘What, the home fleshpots ! Oh, nor’ said 
Portia, smiling. “ But/' she leaned her head upon 
the window-sill with a gesture of discouragement, 
“I feel now as I did when I was living what you 
called the summer insect life. What is it to lead 
to?” 

“What does anything lead to ? ” said Anna, gloom- 
ily. “A little less, or a little more; what does it 
matter ? Who was that Frenchman who said of the 
universe that it was the work of the Devil gone mad ? 
If you reason about things, you may come to that 
conclusion as well as any other. What you have to 
think about is, what each day brings. I believe your 
days here would bring you a sense of independence 
and power you have never known before if you 
will make a little longer trial of them. You would 
find a zest in life, when you realised that you could 
do exactly as you liked with it, that you have no idea 
of now. You are still under the influence ot a multi- 
tude of conventional ideas and prejudices. Wait 
until you have shaken yourself a little more free of 
them before you ask what your life here will lead 
to.” 

“You have shaken yourself free of them, I sup- 


20 § the PENANCE OE PORTIA JAMES. 

pose, Anna ? ” The question seemed to rise unbidden 
to Portia’s lips, "Are you quite content and happy 
in your life ? ” 

"Content and happy ? Who is ? who stops to con- 
sider whether he is or not ? ‘ Oui ! de leur sort tous 

les hommes sont las ! ■ It was Hugo who said that. 
But I would as soon go to prison as go back to my 
old life — rather, in fact, for there would be less pre- 
tence about it. However, try and hold out a little 
longer. We’re to see about your pose this afternoon, 
and we can go to the Luxembourg afterwards ; then 
Clootz’s ; and we’ll wind up with the Gaiete Mont- 
parnasse, if it’s a cool evening. ” 


CHAPTER XVI. 


If Portia had been told to mount her horse any- 
where in the wilds of Australia, and to ride in a bee- 
line from one given point to another, with nothing 
but her own bird-like instinct of locality to guide her, 
she would have obeyed without the smallest hesita- 
tion. But when Anna desired her to explore unaided 
the old and new streets of the Quartier Latin, she 
avowed that she was afraid of the undertaking. The 
dangers that might befal her in the Bush, where to 
lose her way, to be thrown from her horse, or, worst 
of all, to be ‘‘stuck up” by a “sun-owner,” were 
contingencies that pointed to the most tragic endings, 
seemed as nothing compared with the formidableness 
of finding herself in such unknown labyrinths as the 
precincts of the Sorbonne or the Odeon, with the 
consciousness that she was being observed and 
tracked by some casual admirer. Upon the first 
occasion that she had become aware that she was 
followed she had never doubted that the person so 
following her was a private French detective in 

John's employ ; and when she heard the formula, 

14 


210 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA AMES. 


“ Permettez-vous que je vous accompagne, made- 
moiselle ? ” she had hurried on with an expression 
of such genuine terror in her face that her chance 
adorer had been discouraged, and had fallen behind. 

“ That's only their way of showing their appre- 
ciation ; you needn't take any notice of it,” Anna had 
said, laughing, when Portia tremulous.ly i recounted 
her adventure. But the sense of being noticed and 
pursued in any fashion, under present circumstances, 
was such a terrifying one thqt sh,e preferred to sit 
and think, or to sit and brood , as Anna called it, 
alone, when the latter was away, to venturing out 
by herself. Nothing could have marked more plainly 
the difference between the Portia of a few weeks back 
and the Portia of to-day — the Portia who had set out 
so gaily in the ruddily-gathering fog , by herself to 
visit the Academy, and the Portia who shrank now 
from going unaccompanied round the corner. 

“ It's to do the Lorelei you’ll be wanted,” Anna . 
explained to her the same afternoon as they were 
walking together along the unfrequented end of the 
Rue d’Assas, bordering the Luxembourg Gardens — 
“ ‘and she combed her golden hair,’ you remember, 
don’t you ? £>elstanche ” (she named a painter since 
celebrated) “thinks you must have come into the 
world for the express purpose. ” 

“ I wonder why you care so much to have me 
pose,” observed Portia, reflectively ; “you make siicfr 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 2ll 

a point of it, Anna ! And it never seems to me that 
it is really earning money to make it in that way. I 
might be an idiot — I should earn it all the same. It 
is not as though I had to work for what I get, or as 
though it cost me any trouble. I feel ashamed to be 
paid for just sitting still. There is nothing to do. 
I only have to be ” 

“ You little goose ! ” — Annas tones were incisive 
and disdainful — “ that is just the glory of it. It is 
not for anything grafted on to you ; it is for being 
you yourself that you are paid. Did you never read 
what Renan says about a beautiful woman being the 
highest expression of the Creator’s pow’er ? That is 
the way you should look at it. As for not earning 
what you get like any one else, that is all nonsense. 
One person has a fine voice, and makes money by it. 
Another has brains, and he makes money by them. 
You have what is better than either.” 

(i I can’t think that,” said Portia, sceptically ; 
“that is only your way of looking at it, Anna. Be- 
sides, one has to work hard to cultivate a voice and 
brains ; but to pose, one has nothing to cultivate — 
that is just what I complain of.” 

“ One has to cultivate the art of keeping still — 
which you have not quite acquired yet, my dear, let 
me tell you. I can see you are dead-beat some- 
times . . . But you want to know why I make such 
a point of having you pose. I’m afraid it's just for 


212 THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 

the gratification of producing you. A model like 
you is as rare in her way as a Patti or a Sarah Bern- 
hardt in hers. Then you happen to be going through 
an experience that intensifies all your natural advan- 
tages. You needn't laugh ; what I am telling you is 
perfectly true. Any one can see you are not thinking 
of yourself when you pose. I don't know what you 
are thinking of, but you have a kind of abstracted 
look in your eyes, and that coupled with their 
curious colour, makes them just like an Undine's or 
a Lorelei's. And then your wonderful hair I Your 
hair and your skin are exactly the kind that artists 
rave about, and so seldom find." 

Portia made no reply to this tirade. Perhaps her 
thoughts had already been wandering in other direc- 
tions. She had not forgotten to deliver Anna the 
message her gentleman-help had confided to her the 
day of her arrival, and there had been hardly an even- 
ing since upon which Mr. Eames, as he was called, 
had not knocked at their door upon their return from 
Clootz's. Sometimes he stayed an hour, sometimes 
longer. He would begin the conversation by talking 
artistic “shop " to Anna, and Portia would marvel at 
the animation they showed in discussing “plein air" 
and 4 ‘ impressionist toiles. " But after a while Rousky 
and his Polish friend, or some newer interest of 
Anna's, would monopolise her attention. She and 
her fellow-smokers would form a little group apart, 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 213 

and Portia would be left to talk to Mr. Eames alone. 
She could not help feeling that he was interested in 
her, and that he showed his interest by trying, not 
obtrusively, but naively, to find out who and what 
she was. She had decided with Anna that she should 
be called by her mother’s name of Drew, and no one 
among her new entourage suspected that she was 
other than Miss Drew, or that she had been at any 
time of her life though the marriage ceremony. She 
could not talk about pictures to Mr. Eames ; but they 
had other points in common. He was fond of music 
and played with expression, though with little science 
or execution. Portia also loved music, and allowed 
herself to be persuaded to sing her simple ballads of 
“Ben Bolt” and “ Robin Adair ” to please him. He 
seemed to take it for granted that she knew infinitely 
more than was the case, and often when he was 
speaking to her she was obliged to interrupt him by 
asking for information upon some point that was 
evidently only the A B C of his theme. But she had 
explained to him that she came from Australia, and, 
far from making her feel “small,” when she confessed 
her ignorance he appeared to take a delight in plac- 
ing her on the same level as himself, and implying 
that she could teach him perhaps even more than he 
could teach her. Her gentleman-help was the only 
artist, excepting Harry Tolhurst, whom Portia had 
met, and she was willing now to like the whole tribe. 


214 THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 

44 Does Mr. Eames paint good pictures ? ” she asked 
of Anna, after a long pause, with apparent inconse- 
quence in the question, though in reality it was the 
result of a long train of thought. 

Anna replied with a shrug ; the gesture was so 
natural and appropriate that one would never have 
supposed that she was not to the manner born. 
44 He makes wonderful beginnings/’ she said ; 4 4 per- 
haps he will make good ends, too, some days. 
But here we are at Delstanche’s. Mind, now, you 
pull out that silver arrow from your hair when I tell 
you.” 

While Portia Morrisson, alias James, alias Drew, is 
engaged in putting on the attributes of the soul-and- 
body-alluring Lorelei, her friend Mr. Eames has been 
busily engaged in making a sketch from memory of 
her in his studio. He is so much engrossed in it, 
and there is such a fascination in evoking the image 
of her charming figure standing near the piano, that 
it is only when a man’s step mounting the staircase 
stops before his door, and a voice he recognises calls 
from the landing outside, 44 Let me in, old fellow,” 
that he desists from his work. But before going to 
the door he has thrust his sketch, with a heap of 
others, into a portfolio. Miss Drew T ’s image on paper 
must not be revealed to indifferent eyes, any more 
than the image of her he is beginning to carry about 
in his mind. “ Heart ” would be, perhaps, the more 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 215 

fitting word to use in this connection, though Mr. 
Eames, perhaps, was not aware of it himself in his 
present phase. 

“ And you never sent me word you were coming, ” 
he said reproachfully, a moment later, and after a 
grip of the hands had been exchanged between him- 
self and the new-comer. 

“I didn’t know it myself till last night, to tell the 
truth,” replied Harry Tolhurst — for the young man 
in the ulster, with the canvas-covered paint-box in 
his hand, to whom Mr. Eames had just opened the 
door, was none other than Harry. “ I knew I should 
find you in the old place. And how are you getting 
on, old fellow? You got your ‘ Saint Bavon ’ into 
the Salon all right ? ” 

“N — no, I didn’t;” the admission was made re- 
luctantly. “I wasn’t satisfied with it in the end.” 

“And you made such a splendid ebauche. You 
want someone to wrench your work away from you 
when you’ve brought it up to a certain point, I fancy. 
What are you at work on now ? ” 

“ Oh, I’ve half a dozen things in hand. I’ll show 
them to you by-and-by. Tell me first though — I’m 
awfully glad to see you — but why didn’t you give me 
warning? You’re not looking up to the mark, by 
any means. You haven’t had the influenza ” 

“Influenza? No. I’ve been rather knocked out 
pf time by a trouble I’ve been mixed up with lately, 


2 1 6 the PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 

that’s all. I thought I’d propose a walking tour in 
Brittany, if you haven’t made any plans of your 
own/’ 

“ Brittany be bothered! I haven’t any money. 
Let’s go to Barbizon.” 

“That wouldn’t be any cheaper. Besides, it’s no 
use to potter about the forest. I want to go in for 
active exercise of some kind. I think I need it.” 

“You look as though you did, old man! Ton 
my word, I believe you must have had the influenza, 
after all — or you’ve been overdoing it somehow.” 

“ Perhaps I have been working too hard,” admitted 
Harry ; but the admission was obviously made for 
the purpose of putting an end to the cross-examina- 
tion to which his friend seemed inclined to subject 
him. “And how are all the Paris lot ? Is Miss Ross 
always to the fore ? ” 

“Rousky’s to the fore,” responded Mr. Eames, 
shortly. He paused a moment, and continued : 
“There’s a girl, a young lady, staying with Anna 
Ross just now.” 

“Ah ! ” said Harry, indifferently. 

“Yes. You’ll see her to-night, I expect, at 
Clootz’s. I should like to know what you think of 
her.” 

“Ah ! ” said Harry again. “ Pour cause?" 

“ Pour cause — if her presence accounts for the fact 
that I am irresistibly drawn to Anna’s studio every 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 217 

evening. But Fm afraid she’s not a permanent ; she’s 
only some beautiful bird of passage. With us, and 
not of us.” 

“ It’s as serious as that ! ” said his friend 9miling. 
Harry’s smiles were, as we have seen, extremely 
rare ; and it would seem that they had become more 
fleeting as well, for his face relapsed almost im- 
mediately into its accustomed morne expression. 

His companion, meanwhile, was already half 
regretting the confidences he had made. To tell the 
truth, it was only the longing to find a pretext for 
speaking about Portia that had prompted him to 
make them at all, though perhaps he was not loth to 
let his friend know at the same time that the priority 
of right of paying particular court to the charming 
bird of passage overhead was, in a measure, be- 
spoken. A growing interest of a tender description 
will manifest itself sometimes in an irresistible desire 
to speak of the adored object in season and out of 
season ; and until Harry appeared upon the scene, 
there was no one to whom Portia’s gentleman-help 
could unburden himself in any degree respecting the 
nature of the sentiment she had awakened in him. 
He did not go so far, however, as to display his 
memory-sketch of her to Harry. There were a 
hundred congenial topics for the newly-restored 
friends to talk about without entering into their 
affaires de cceur } as women would have done in their 


2 18 THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 

place — their own works and that of their fellow- 
artists being naturally the most congenial topic of 
all. Harry had to be posted up in all the latest 
gossip of the atelier , to be informed as to which of 
the band was arrive \ who among them had “ exposed ” 
at the Salon, who had been lucky enough to have his 
toile purchased by the French Government, and a great 
deal more to the same effect. Occasionally, however, 
he would relapse into the kind of reverie known as 
a “ brown study " (though why a study should be 
brown, while the devils of despondency are blue, is 
a fact that no one has ever satisfactorily explained), 
and would apparently gaze right through the “St. 
Bavon ” that he had been criticising in his friend's 
behoof, or beyond it, to some intangible picture of 
his own evoking. At these moments a puzzled look 
would flit across Mr. Eames's pleasant blue eyes, and 
turning around to place his picture against the wall, 
he would hum softly — 

u Elle avait des manieres tres bien* 

“Elle etait coiffee k la chien, 

“ Elle chantait comme une petite folle, 

A Batignolles.* 

“Let's take a turn in the Luxembourg before din- 
ner," he said at last. “It seems to me you want 
rousing up, old man ! " 

“All right," assented Harry coming back to him- 
self with an effort from the visionary regions he ha<J 


7 HE PENANCE OF PORT/ A JAMES . 


219 

been wandering in. “But haven't you to get ready 
first ? ” 

“ Ready ! That won't take me long. I'm ready 
now." 

He had been, in point of fact, peeling off his 
plum-coloured jersey and dragging it over his head 
as he spoke, and now substituted in its place a 
morning coat and artistically-knotted Lavalliere 
tie. 

A Tam-o'-Shanter completed his costume ; and 
thus attired, with his pipe and tobacco-pouch thrust 
into his pocket, he followed his friend out of the 
studio. 

It was an afternoon upon which the band of the 
Garde Republicaine had been announced to play in 
the Luxembourg Gardens, and, though the perform- 
ance was drawing to a close, the crowd was still 
great. In the close neighbourhood of the music all 
the chairs were taken, but a throng of promenaders 
was circling round them, amid which the grisettes 
of the Quartier Latin mustered in full force. Harry 
paused a moment before joining in the round to take 
in the details of the scene. It had been familiar 
enough to him during his last long residence in Paris, 
but it came upon him now with an air of novelty. 
Looked at from a surface point of view, it was a gay 
and enlivening spectacle enough. What prettier 
getting for holiday-makers assembled in the open 


2 20 THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 

air would it be possible to find than this exquisite 
commingling of nature and art — this glorious pro- 
fusion of trees and lawns, and terraces and parterres, 
and fountains and statues, blended into a stately and 
harmonious mise en scene P There, as he remembered 
it, was the grotto of the monster Polyphemus, with 
the water still musically coursing over the white 
body of the beautiful nymph Galatea. Away in front 
of him were the rigid statues of the Queens of 
France, ranged in stony propriety against their back- 
ground of leafy green. To his right, the descending 
steps of the terrace leading to a vast parterre of 
flowers, worthy of framing the “stately pleasure 
dome” of Kubla Khan, in the midst of which a 
mighty jet of water rose and fell, lazily and without 
effort, as though it were dancing up and down for 
its own pleasure alone. Among the crowds of 
listeners the streaming ribands of the nourrices and 
their gold-pinned capes made a pretty variety, while 
around the feet of the fat French mamans 3.x\&bonnes 
the little cherts and bibiches in limited number (for 
olive-branches in France are a luxury not to be too 
recklessly indulged in) turned up the dusty soil with 
their miniature wooden spades. 

The band was playing the Marche Indienne as Harry 
and his companion drew near, and the wild joyous- 
ness of the strain seemed to harmonise well with the 
scene around them. Harry centred his attention 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 221 

upon the students and the grisettes, as being the new- 
est element that the show could furnish him after his 
long severance from Quartier Latin ways. He saw 
that the students walked by themselves, and the gri- 
settes by themselves, either in arm-in-arm couples or 
in affectionate clusters of threes and fours, and when- 
ever one group or couple passed or met another group, 
a word, or a nod, or a passing “ He, mon petit ! ” or 
“Tiens, ma belle !” testified to the friendly relations 
existing between them. Some of the grisettes — mo- 
distes, perhaps, in their own right — wore wildflower- 
wreathed hats that recalled a vision of Portia on the 
Academy morning to Harry's mind. Others, ap- 
parently of the blanchisseuse order, who possessed 
nothing, in all probability, but their bodies in their 
own right, wore no hats at all. These, however, were 
always daintily coiffe , and all bore alike a certain air 
of trim neatness and artistic nattiness. Few pos- 
sessed pretty faces, and among those who had lost 
their first freshness more than one had hard eyes and 
an animal mouth. It was in vain that Harry sought 
to discover a Mimi Pinson among them. He turned 
away from the spectacle with a grave face, while his 
friend laughed, and observed : 

‘ ‘ A page out of the Vie de Boheme . You should go 
to the Bal Bullier to see the suite” 

‘ ‘ I don't care to see it, " he said, with a sigh, ‘ ‘ when 
I think it's been going on since Murger's time — and 


£22 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 


how long before ? — and that it will be going on when 
all these people are dead and gone. I feel like that 
Duke — I forget his name — I should like to build my- 
self a place underground, and never come out of my 
hole again." 

The bitterness with which Harry said these words 
struck painfully upon his friend's ear. “ There's 
something more than influenza in this," he said to 
himself sagely. ‘ ‘ Whatever the trouble that he's been 
mixed up with may be, it's evident he's been pretty 
hard hit; it's gone deep." 

“ Come on, old fellow ! " he added aloud. “ Don't 
do the King Solomon business over again. It's very 
pleasant while it lasts, and where’s the use of looking 
* before and after ' ? I wish you would tell me your 
yarn. I'm as open with you myself as a child. Come 
on to the bench over there, and let's have a smoke." 

Now, as Fate or Chance would have it — for Fate 
and Chance mean much the same thing — at the very 
moment when the two young men were about to take 
their seats upon the empty bench on the other side 
of the broad avenue, beneath one of the properest of 
the stone queens arrayed in her chiselled vertugadin, 
Portia was crossing the same spot from the opposite 
end of the garden. Her visit to the painter, Del- 
stanche, had not been altogether as satisfactory to 
herself as to Anna. She had been made to take her 
hair down, and to show her neck and .arms ; in all 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 223 

their summer whiteness ; and though she had done as 
much times out of mind during the past week while 
she had been posing for Anna, to do so on the pres- 
ent occasion had seemed a formidable ordeal. Anna 
had upbraided her for her self-consciousness, and had 
declared that she had no true feeling for art, other- 
wise she would have been glad to consecrate her 
beautiful person to the cause ; and had left her, after 
thus scoldihg her* to go to Colla Rossi's studio, but 
not until she had shown her friend how she might 
return through the Luxembourg Gardens alone. 
Portia had sat for a long time in a secluded corner of 
these, out Qf the* way of the crowd and the band, 
thinking drearily of what she should do, and only 
solacing herself by glancing from time to time at the 
evening sky* mdde up of a mass of dark grey clouds, 
through which the declining sun seemed to burn redly 
in patches and scratches of flame. After a time she 
noticed that the bench she was sitting on had another 
occupant. A Frenchman of the meridional type 
(though, to out heroine, he was neither more nor less 
than a Frenchman), with swarthy skin and piercing 
black eyes, was eyeing her with undisguised admira- 
tion. She looked away in the vain effort to appear 
unconscious of his glance, but the tell-tale colour 
mantling over cheek and neck betrayed her. He 
moved a little, nearer,, and said abruptly : 

“Mon Dieu ! mademoiselle, ne vous effrayez pas. 


224 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 


Mais vous etes tellement jolie — on aurait de la peine 
k ne pas vous regarder, et ” 

Portia did not give him time, however, to finish 
all his sentence. At the first words she had jumped 
from her seat with the rapid movement of a frightened 
bird, and was walking away, straight in front of her, 
with no definite idea but to escape. She heard quick 
footsteps behind her, and the same voice that had 
already addressed her repeated reproachfully, “O, 
la cruelle ! ” 

Notwithstanding her real alarm the solemn absurd- 
ity of this denunciation was almost too much for 
Portias gravity. But she felt that to lose her dignity 
at this juncture would be fatal. She walked on, 
therefore, looking neither to the right nor the left, with 
her head erect ; quite unmindful of the fact that two 
young men, new-comers these, were about to cross 
her path diagonally. 

“ There's an illustration of the hawk and the pigeon 
game,” Mr. Eames said. He had taken in the situa- 
tion at a glance. “It wouldn't be a bad idea for a 
tableau de genre. Why ” — his voice changed sud- 
denly, and its tones become strangely eager, “ if I 
don’t believe — no, surely — it cant be — yes, it is — it is 
— it’s she — it’s Miss Drew ! ” 

“ That Miss Drew!” echoed Harry. It was all 
that in the profound astonishment of the discovery 
he could find voice to say, for at this moment Portia 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 225 

looked round, and a shock of mutual recognition 
ensued between them. 

The quality that renders a man of the world so 
valuable in an emergency is, above all, his presence 
of mind. Having reached the point at which nothing 
can any longer take him by surprise, he never com- 
mits the blunder of losing his head, but keeps his 
mind clear for action under the most startling and 
unforeseen circumstances. Harry Tolhurst was not 
perhaps, strictly speaking, a man of the world in 
this sense. The surprise of suddenly beholding the 
woman who had become such a living memory to 
him ; the woman whom he believed to be lost to him 
for ever — to be married indeed, and wandering over 
Europe with her husband (for Mary had disappeared 
since the morning when she had rushed with her child, 
like one demented, from his studio, and there had 
been no one to inform him of the sequel to Portia's 
wedding) ; the astonishment of encountering her here 
in Paris under a new name, a name that belonged to 
her neither as maid nor as wife ; of finding her trans- 
formed into a denizen of the Quartier Latin, and a 
guest of the emancipated Anna ; roving about the 
Luxembourg by herself, and fleeing before unwel- 
come attentions — the shock of it was so great that he 
was unable at first to command his countenance. 
Portia had “ gone white," as the common people say, 
on beholding him, and to a casual observer it might 
15 


226 the PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 

have seemed that these two young people, meeting 
by accident upon a lovely summer’s evening in the 
brightest place in creation, must have taken each 
other for ghosts, so unduly startled did they appear. 
To anyone who had witnessed the exquisite render- 
ing of Romeo and Juliet at the Lyceum there would 
have been a something, however, underlying the 
terror in Portia’s eyes that might have dimly recalled 
the expression in Juliet’s face when she beheld Romeo 
for the first time. Though not a man of the world, 
Harry was able to divine that there was more than 
one cause for the emotion his presence had aroused. 
That Portia wished him to appear as though he did 
not recognise her was evident to him from the half- 
imploring glance that followed her first uncontrollable 
start of surprise. It was well for both, perhaps, that 
the gentleman-help was so wholly engrossed in his 
own share of interest in the meeting, and that three 
subjects filled his mind at this moment to the exclu- 
sion of all others : the first being disappointment that 
he could not gratify his impulse to pommel the meri- 
dional on the spot ; the second, the desire to know 
whether Miss Drew’s sudden pallor was to be entirely 
ascribed to the emotion consequent upon having been 
accosted, or whether his own appearance as a res- 
cuer could have had any share in it ; and the third 
the regret that he had come out in his Tam-o’-Shanter, 
and was obliged to feel himself so altogether unfit an 


The PM nance op Portia James. 227 

object to accompany the perfectly dressed lady of 
his allegiance. 

By the time he had made up his mind that none of 
these subjects could be satisfactorily disposed of at 
the present moment, Portia had been enabled to re- 
cover a certain degree of sang-froid, and Harry had 
mastered himself sufficiently to become a party to 
the farce of being formally presented to her by his 
friend. Under ordinary circumstances there would 
have been nothing to justify Mr. Eames in doing 
more than raising his hat and passing on — but Fate 
seemed to have willed that he and Miss Drew should 
never meet save under extraordinary circumstances. 
Had not they broken the ice once and for all when 
he had done “ porle-faix” and “ water-carrier/' to say 
nothing of all-round gentleman-help, for her upon 
the first occasion of his meeting her as she sat help- 
less upon the stairs outside his room ? And was he 
going to abandon her now, when he encountered her 
speeding like a fluttered bird before the unwelcome 
advances of an insolent foreigner ! There was every 
warrant, he told himself, for stopping to speak to 
her — he did not add that even had there been none 
at all he would probably have done the same. But 
he addressed her in the soft, half-caressing, half- 
protecting voice that came to him instinctively when 
he spoke to a pretty woman. He asked permission to 
see her safe through the Gardens (“ safe” seemed an 


228 The Penance of Portia James. 

allowable adjective in the face of what he had just 
witnessed), and he excused himself for being in such 
ragamuffin trim ; and finally he bethought himself of 
his friend, in whose direction Miss Drew had studi- 
ously refrained from looking, and begged to be 
allowed to introduce Mr. Harry Tolhurst, a distin- 
guished painter and Academician “ en herbe ” to her 
notice. 

Portia bowed assent, and for one brief instant 
Harry’s eyes encountered her in full. Well may the 
eyes be called the windows of the soul when so 
much can stand revealed through them in the mearest 
flash of time. That Portia understood and appre- 
ciated his reticence, that she was grateful to him 
beyond words for having exercised it and that she 
trusted — yes, that she trusted him entirely — all this 
Harry could read in that one transient glance. The 
knowledge that he shared a secret with her, unknown 
to anybody else in the world (bewildering as the ex- 
istence of a secret of any kind undoubtedly was, and 
terrifying as the revelation of a mystery of any kind in 
connection with her pure young life must necessarily 
appear), was the greatest possible solace to him. 
Just as he had parted from her in Piccadilly, after 
that red-letter, radiant white-stone morning he had 
spent with her at the Academy, so she appeared to 
him now ? The very dress that clung in its tailor- 
made folds round her supple, beautiful form — the 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 229 

very rose-splattered hat, under whose broad rim he 
had last looked into her eyes, were the same. The 
intensity of his recollection of her was made clear to 
him as he measured the resemblance between it and 
the living, breathing woman in front of him. It 
must have been a prophetic intuition surely that had 
made him attribute the “seediness” that his friend 
had detected in him to a “trouble he had been mixed 
up with ; ” for the trouble had been none other than 
Portia herself, and though the “mixing up” had not 
as yet occurred, it seemed likely to take place now. 
But how far would she trust him ? — how far would 
her spoken confidences ratify the assurance of her 
belief in him that he could read in her eyes? It 
could be nothing but a providential interposition 
surely that had sent him to the very place to which 
she had fled for refuge, in order that he might be at 
hand to help and perhaps to save her. Anna Ross’s 
quatrieme was not perhaps the precise ark of refuge 
in which he would have cared to see a sister of his 
own take shelter ; but Portia, in her transparent in- 
nocence, was no doubt like Charity — fearing nothing, 
believing all things, and hoping all things. 

To think, however, that his friend Eames’s babble 
concerning the stranger overhead — the beautiful bird 
of passage, as he had called her — should have had 
none other than Portia James for its object ! How 
different from the unconcerned “Ah!” with which 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 


230 

he had greeted the communication, would have been 
his manner of receiving it, if he could have had the 
least idea to whom it referred. The thought that 
Portia might still be free ; that her marriage announce- 
ment which he had read in the papers (would he 
ever forget the chill it had sent through all his being ?) 
was the result of some ghastly blunder, made his 
heart beat high with hope. He watched with jealous 
eyes for the manifestation of some particular sym- 
pathy existing between his friend and the supposed 
Miss Drew ; but Portia's manner reassured him. Not 
so his friends ! That the gentleman-help had been, in 
vulgar parlance, “bowled over' would have been 
clear to less jealous eyes than his. Portia was the 
same, and yet not the same. She had lost the en - 
jouement that he remembered, which had been a great 
charm. But she had gained something in its place 
that seemed to rivet him to her more closely still. 
When he had thought of her hitherto, it had been as 
of Undine before she had awakened to the possession 
of a soul, or as of the little mermaid before she had 
acquired a pair of white human feet and immortality 
by walking over knives. He could have fancied 
that Portia was walking over the knives now, and 
that the dawn of the newly-awakened soul was re- 
flected in her eyes. If he had been walking by her 
side in the Palace of Truth he would have spoken 
out his thoughts concerning her ; but as he was walk- 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 231 

ing under the eyes of a third person, and as she had 
chosen to appear in the character of the young lady 
to whom he had been only just introduced, he main- 
tained a discreet silence. To feign indifference was 
his only refuge. Under the actual circumstances he 
felt that he could not trust himself to speak. 

Mr. Eames, for his own part, thought it wiser to 
abstain from making any reference to the hawk-and- 
pigeon episode he had witnessed, but he promised 
himself that he would be at hand upon the very next 
occasion that it should befall Miss Drew to sit in the 
Luxembourg Gardens alone. 

“ Miss Rossis not with you ? ” he said inquiringly ; 
his tone seemed to imply that she ought to have been. 
“I thought I saw you go out together/' 

“She had to go to Colla Rossi's/’ replied Portia. 
“She told me to meet her at Clootzs at six; and 
there is a book I promised to call for at the atelier 
first on the way." 

“ May /get it for you ? ” he asked ; “ or may we 
wait for you until you are ready, as we are going to 
Clootz's too ? ” 

“Thanks, "said Portia, hesitatingly ; “but, indeed, 
I know my way so well from the atelier now." 

Though her words conveyed no absolute refusal of 
the offer, Harry gathered from them that she did not 
wish to afficher herself in public — the public at 
Clootz’s — with Mr. Eames, and he rejoiced thereat in 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 


232 

his heart. The latter, however, did not allow him- 
self to be discouraged. 

“ I hope you will keep places for us at your table, 
then,” he said, “Or, if we are there first, shall we 
keep yours at ours? Tolhurst and Miss Ross are 
old friends. ” 

“Oh, are they ? ” said Portia, raising her eyes shy- 
ly towards Harry’s face as she spoke. “ I must pre- 
pare Anna for the meeting. I am sure she will be 
very pleased.” 

It was the first time she had looked in his direction, 
though she was walking between the two young 
men as they made their way along the gravelled 
terrace fronting the ancient palace, bordered by the 
trim row of orange trees in green tubs. The plea- 
sant feeling of complete ease which she had known 
when she had last encountered Harry was gone. 
She had herself willed that he should pass for a 
stranger in her eyes : yet how could she bring her- 
self to address him as a stranger when he was in 
reality so closely bound up with all the associations 
that she clung to most in her past life ? She had 
not said to him in so many words, like the con- 
spirators in a burlesque, “ Let us dissemble.” But 
her eyes had said it for her, and he had dissembled 
accordingly. What could he have thought of the 
obligation she had thus laid upon him ? There was 
yet another curious sensation respecting him in her 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 233 

mind. Though the feeling of being at ease in his 
society had disappeared, the knowledge of the tacit 
understanding existing between herself and him, the 
sense of the secret they were sharing together un- 
known to all ( for even Anna need not be told that 
Harry was a former acquaintance), seemed to have 
brought her into closer communion with him than 
ever. She remembered how she had felt in her 
childish days when a household birthday was in 
store and a surprise was to be operated upon Emma 
or Wilmer — how the person with whom she shared 
the secret involved in the preparation of the surprise 
had assumed quite a new importance in her life ; 
how the interchange of a look had become an action 
fraught with a mysterious significance of its own ; 
how the idea of “we know something” seemed to 
be expressed in every gesture of the person who 
was in partnership in her secret, and what good 
friends it had made them as long as the secret lasted. 
Were these the terms upon which she would find 
herself placed henceforth with Harry, or was he 
condemning her in his mind for having a secret at 
all? He had answered her look of inquiry when 
Anna's name was mentioned, but his voice had 
sounded formal and distant. 

“I had the pleasure of meeting Miss Ross at 
Julian's some three years ago,” he said. “ Does she 
go there still ? ” 


234 THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 

“ No ; she is at Laurens' now, and she works out 
of doors a good deal besides. ” 

“Yes, she is a tremendous worker," putin Mr. 
Eames. “ She is serieuse , as they say at the atelier. 
That reminds me, Tolhurst, you must see her old 
woman on the beach at Etretat. As a ‘ plein air ' it 
is capital, full of air and light. By the bye, what 
has become of your Madonna? A lot of fellows 
here have told me about it. They say you could 
never have painted such a picture if you hadn't done 
your time in Paris. Where is she now ? ” 

“Well, the picture is hanging in my studio," said 
Harry. “The dealers would have none of it al- 
though the critics waged a fierce war over it. As 
for my model, she left me en plan. That is one of 
the reasons why I came over. I was at work upon 
a fresh subject with the same model, and about a 
week ago she disappeared, and I have not been able 
to find a trace of her so far." 

“ Fancy that ! " said Mr. Eames, with mock solem- 
nity, and he softly chanted : 

“ * Je P ai aimee autant que j’ ai, pu 
Mais j’ ai pas pu lorsque j’ ai su 
Qu’elle me trompait avec Anatole 
A Batignolles. , ” 

“ Did you inquire at the place she lived at ? " asked 
Portia, in a strained and eager voice. “Could they 
tell you nothing of her there ? " 


THE PENANCE OF POET/ A JAMES . 235 

“Nothing whatever!" The interest manifested 
by Miss Drew in his friend’s model surprised Mr. 
Eames not a little. “ But she was not a professional 
model. I rather think she was a deserted wife. Her 
husband had sent her over from America with the 
promise that he would follow her, but after she reached 
London she heard nothing more of him ; she was 
glad to earn a little money by posing, and I think she 
used to ruminate over her wrongs while she was 
sitting for me. I have seen her eyes flash and her 
lips move more than once." 

“Perhaps the husband came back," said Portia, in 
a low voice, with her eyes fixed upon the ground. 

“I hope he did, for her sake, though not for mine. 
It will be a long time before I find such a model 
again. I believe that must have been the explana- 
tion of the mystery though, for they told me at 
the place she lived at that a broad, red-bearded man 
— a swell (they were careful to mention that he was a 
swell ) — had been to see her the day she ran away 
from the studio — the husband, without any doubt ; 
and there had been a scene between the newly- 
united couple, as it appeared. The next morning 
Mrs. Morris disappeared with her baby, bag and 
baggage, and left no address, but behaved ‘ ’and- 
some ' — as her landlady told me — from which I con- 
cluded that the husband is rich, and that I may look 
for my model again in vain, " 


236 the PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 

“ What a curious story ! ” said Portia. She paused, 
and a deep roselike flush mounted in her cheeks 
before she spoke again. “ Do you know — did they 
say — could you tell me, perhaps ” (she seemed to 
find a difficulty in framing her question), '‘whether 
the husband was finally reconciled to his — wife? — 
whether they stayed together, I mean ? ” 

"I don’t know the sequel,” said Harry. The 
interest Miss James took in his unknown model, 
which he had attributed in the first instance to her 
sole recollection of his picture (how well he remem- 
bered her telling him of her weird impression in con- 
nection with it the first time she had seen it standing 
by his side !), was beginning to puzzle him almost 
as much as Mr. Eames. ‘ ‘ I daresay I could find 
out, though, if you want to be satisfied upon the 
point of whether they lived happily 'ever after.’ But 
I’m afraid they didn’t, and that they never will. She 
evidently had no confidence in him , and he seems to 
have left her after making the scene I was told about. 
Whether she intended to run after him when she left 
in such a hurry the next morning, or whether she 
was running away from him in her turn, I have no 
means of knowing. Sometimes I think she will turn 
up again, for, to say the least of it, she ought to 
have written me a line if she had no intention of 
coming back at all,” 

“It would interest me to know, if you do hear,” 


PenaMce of Portia James, $ 37 

persisted Portia, “ I have seen the picture Mr. 
Eames was talking about in the Academy ; I re- 
member it very well. The child was fair and blue- 
eyed, and the Madonna had strange dark eyes, with 
a wistful look, that seemed to see some far-away 
vision of the cross. They were eyes that would 
haunt one afterwards. Mary's dress was a sort of 
striped blue and white drapery, was it not ? And 
through an open space in the background you could 
see a glimpse of an Eastern landscape in a kind of 
blinding sunlight." 

“Well, if your picture impressed itself upon the 
memory of everyone who saw it as thoroughly as 
upon Miss Drew, you have no cause to complaip, 
old man," said Mr. Eames ; “you must have struck 
oil this time, and no mistake ! And this is the 
person who will never say a word about pictures to 
me — who can't draw, she says ! " 

Harry turned towards her, with a gratified smile — 
one of his rare smiles — lighting up his sombre eyes. 

“You must have been a good many times to the 
Academy, I should think." 

“Only once," responded Portia, with an answer- 
ing smile of quiet triumph in her glance. An un- 
reasoning pleasure was coursing through her veins 
as she exchanged this look of secret understanding 
with him. Those two little words implied so much 
more than any but he and she could wot of. 


238 The PE HA MCE OF PORTIA /AMES. 

“Only once ! ” echoed Mr. Eames, while Harry 
was hugging himself with the idea that her avowal 
might be construed as he would fain have construed 
it in his heart. “Then you have a phenomenal 
memory for pictures, that is all I can say ; and upon 
the ex pede Herculem basis you should make a 
capital art critic. By the bye, Miss Ross said she 
was going to initiate you into the mysteries of the 
Gaiete Montparnasse to-night. It’s a great institu- 
tion. Those cafes chantants on the other side of the 
river are the abomination of desolation in my eyes, 
but the Gaiete is almost worthy of its name. You 
remember it, Harry ? ” 

“I don't think I can boast of any acquaintance 
with it," replied Harry, drily, “if it is a thing to 
boast of at all. Miss Ross's ways are peculiar, and 
tastes differ ; but if the Gaiete Montparnasse is what 
I imagine it to be, I don't think Miss James — Miss 
Drew, I mean — will be particularly edified or amused 
by a visit there — a kind of sixth-rate Paulus-and- 
Therese entertainment, I suppose?" 

“Not a bit of it! It has a line of its own," 
laughed Mr. Eames. And once more he hummed : 

** ‘ La morale de c’tte oraison la 
C’est qu’ les p’tites fill’s qu’a pas d’ papa 
Doiv’nt jamais aller a l’£cole 
A Batignlles.’ ” 

The closing “ Batignolles " had each time a long- 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES, 239 

drawn sonorous sound that fell tunefully upon the 
ear. 

“Do tell me all the song, please/' said Portia. 

“ I will concoct an expurgated rendering of it, if 
you will allow me/’ he said ; “ but you mustn't let 
yourself be prejudiced by anticipation against the 
Gaiete. It has its vile side, of course, if you look 
for it ; but you won’t look for it — and there is some 
awfully pretty singing. It’s a great place, too, for 
seeing the populace. If Miss Ross really means to 
go, my friend and I ’'(he looked at Harry for assent) 
“ will ask leave to accompany you. It's not a place 
where a lady ought to go by herself." 

“If Miss Ross is as I remember her, she does not 
admit that such places exist," said Harry. 

“Well, then, we’ll help her to take care of Miss 
Drew, who does admit it," said Mr. Eames, and, the 
limit of the gardens being reached by this time, the 
two separated by the large iron gates that guard the 
entrance to the Luxembourg Gardens on the Rue de 
Vaugirard side. Portia went on her way alone. The 
expression that Harry read in her eyes as she wished 
him “ Au re voir " expressed the word Remember as 
plainly as ever the voice of the murdered Charles 
sounding through the ages could have uttered it. 
Before separating, it was arranged that the party 
should meet again at Clootz's half an hour later. 

“ Has Miss Drew been here long ?” was Harry's 


240 THE PENAHCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 

first question as he turned away with his friend ; 
there was no loop-hole of a pretext for running after 
Portia, as he was longing to do ; and the burden upon 
his mind was only in part alleviated by finding her 
again under circumstances so unexpected and mys- 
terious. 

“ Six days and six nights,” answered Mr. Eames 
sententiously ; he had lit his pipe immediately the 
feminine element was removed from his path, and 
he was puffing it into savour as he spoke ; “ she 
dropped down upon us from the skies. I had never 
heard Miss Ross mention her name until one day, 
going out of the studio, I found ‘ a maiden sitting all 
forlorn ’ on the staircase, with a portmanteau that a 
‘ hamal ’ in Constantinople would have looked at 
twice. She let me shoulder it for her up the stairs, 
and that was the informal way in which we first 
became acquainted.” 

“ And I suppose you have seen a good deal of her 
since ! ” said Harry, gloomily. 

“That depends on what you call a good deal. If 
it were any one but Miss Drew I might say yes. Be- 
ing Miss Drew, I feel I have seen very little of her. 
She is amazingly reticent too — so a good deal in any 
case would only go for a little. What I’m mostly 
afraid of is that she’s only here as an ‘ oiseau sur 
la branche ’ — 4 a beautiful bird of passage,’ in short, 
as I said before. Some day she will fly away as she 


THE PENANCE OP PORTIA JAMES. 


24 r 


came. She never says a word about herself, either/' 
and with his pipe between his lips Mr. Eames con- 
cluded : 

“ * Quandell’ s’ balladait sous 1’ del bleu 
Avec ses ch’veux couleur de feu 
On croyait voir une aureole 
A Batignolles. ’ 

That is really the colour of her hair, you know. ” 

“ She doesn't look as though she had been used 
to the kind of life Anna will induct her into," observed 
Harry. 

“ Neither has she ; she has roughed it, she told 
me, but in a different way. She comes from Austra- 
lia, you know ; that accounts for her being a little 
crude sometimes ; but even her crudity has a charm 
of its own. You haven't told me what you think of 
her yet." 

“ Of Miss Drew ! "said Harry, jesuitically. “ My 
good fellow, I can't form an opinion of a woman 
whom I've hardly seen." 

** You've seen enough of her to form an opinion of 
her looks," I should think. 

“ Of her looks. Oh! she's good-looking enough, 
if that’s what you mean." 

What a cold-blooded, unappreciative fellow you 
are. Well ! you may do the amiable to Anna Ross 
by-and-by if you choose, only leave the * bird of 
passage' to me." 

16 


242 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 


And in the belief that his friend was totally unim- 
pressed by the graces that he himself saw with clearer 
eyes every day, he conducted Harry, with a light 
heart, to Clootz's. 


CHAPTER XVII. 


“ A party of pleasure, a party of four, 

Too few if one less, and too many if more.” 

These words occurred to Mr. Earnest mind, with 
a mournful sense of their inappropriateness to the 
occasion, as he threaded his way through the turmoil 
of the Rue de la Gaiete, towards the famous cafe 
chantant of the same name, by Anna’s side, while 
Harry and the supposed Miss Drew followed at a 
respectful distance. Even a party of three would be 
preferable, he thought, when one of the three 
happened to be the right one. It was a singular 
fact, too, that after the almost officious display of 
indifference his friend had manifested towards the 
“ beautiful bird of passage’' to whom he had been 
recently introduced, he should have contrived, 
nevertheless, and apparently by accident, to fall 
behind with her as soon as they left the restaurant. 
Though to Miss Ross one part of Paris was just the 
same as another, and though he believed her capable 
of walking fearlessly about in such uncanny places 
as the Boulevards exterieurs, regardless even of the 

hideous presence of the professional rodeurs de bar - 
243 


244 THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 

riereSy he knew that it was not the same with her 
companion. Miss Drew still shrank involuntarily 
when she found herself in the noisy workmen's 
quarters of the Gaiete Montparnasse, where blouses 
and sabots might be said to hold the haut du pave , 
for all the share of it they gave the passers-by of 
gentler associations. She would retreat into the 
middle of the street before the advance of some tipsy 
Coupeau staggering out of the shop of a marchand de 
vin , and the person accompanying her at such a time 
might possibly gain the inestimable privilege of 
having her place her hand within his arm for protec- 
tion. Mr. Eames, it is needless to say, would fain 
have been that privileged person ; but though Miss 
Ross walked defiantly on, keeping her place on the 
trottoir with a grim determination not to be pushed 
off it by all the voyous in Paris, and though his 
presence was, as he well knew, entirely superfluous 
upon the occasion, he could not pay her the ques- 
tionable compliment of leaving her to prove her in- 
dependence alone. His misgivings, however, were 
not allayed by perceiving, every time he glanced 
round in Miss Drew's direction, that the ice was 
apparently broken between her new friend and her- 
self. He had imagined at the outset that, in accord- 
ance with spiritualistic theories, their auras must be 
antagonistic, and he had regretted the circumstance 
— moderately — for he would have liked them to be 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 


2 45 

friends in reason. But now another fear, and a 
keener, had taken possession of his soul. To walk 
as they were doing just now, with their heads in- 
clined towards each other, they must have hit upon 
some wonderfully congenial topic since they had left 
Clootz's, at which place he had noticed that they had 
hardly exchanged a word. Now the whole distance 
from Clootz's to the cafe was not a mile : therefore 
the spontaneity of the sympathy was, to say the 
least of it, disquieting. 

Harry had, however, the best of reasons, though 
Mr. Eames was all unaware of them, for waiving 
initiatory formalities when he found himself for a 
few moments in the unhampered enjoyment of Miss 
Drew's society. By a kind of mutual understanding, 
he and Portia had successfully evaded the manoeuvres 
whereby her gentleman-help sought to remain by 
her side as they left Clootz's. And as it is impos- 
sible for four people to walk abreast in the evening 
in the Rue de la Gaiete, it followed that, by calmly 
maintaining his place and ignoring all his friend's 
transparent efforts to oust him from it, Harry had all 
the advantage on his side, for he was enabled to fall 
slowly behind with his companion. Once the others 
were separated from him by ever so short a distance, 
he might speak without fear. In the midst of the 
foreign crowd he and his companion were as much 
alone for all conversational purposes as though they 


246 the PENA JVC E OF PORTIA JAMES . 


had been on a desert island. They might, indeed, 
have shouted State secrets or talked treason in each 
other’s ears, had they been so inclined, without any- 
body’s being the wiser. 

But State secrets and treason would not have had 
half the effect upon Harry of the few timid words 
uttered, as soon as they found themselves alone, by 
the girl who walked next to him. Portia plunged 
recklessly and without preamble into the heart of 
her subject — the most interesting one in the world 
to Harry; since it concerned herself ; and if he had 
cherished her half-confidences before, the sensation 
with which he received her fuller confidences now, 
and the rapture of deducing therefrom that she must 
in part have divined the nature of the sentiment he 
had given her unsought, may be imagined by all 
who have known what it is at some period of their 
lives to worship “a bright particular star, and think 
to wed it ? ” 

“ I want to thank you,” Portia began hurriedly— 
the people she encountered were pushing past her, 
and bearing down upon her, with the swagger that is 
so true an expression of the mental attitude of a 
certain type of ouvrier in Pairs ; but Harry was there 
to clear a way for her — “ I want to thank you, while 
I have the opportunity, for not seeming to know me 
in the Luxembourg this afternoon. I am hiding for 
a little. I have good reasons for it It isn’t my 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 


24 7 

own fault, indeed. You may be sure of that. 
Anna knows all about it. But I don't want my 
friends to know I am here. I have taken my 
mother's name to make more sure. If Mr. Eames 
had seen that you knew me, he might have asked 
questions " 

She caught her breath spasmodically between each 
sentence, and Harry guessed that the effort of con- 
trolling her emotion was severe. There was some- 
thing in her tones that suggested a risk of her break- 
ing into a sob between the pauses. To have an- 
swered her with any kind of ceremony, or other than 
straight from his heart, feeling as he did at this 
moment, would have been impossible to him. 

4 * It is I who thank you for trusting me/' he said 
earnestly ; it was necessary to speak very close in 
her ear in the midst of the jostling, unyielding crowd, 
and this was just the moment that Mr. Eames chose 
for taking observations in the rear. “ I know we 
have only met a very few times, but each time has 
counted for so much in my life. I venture to tell 
you this, though I would not have dared to so 
soon under any other circumstances. Only I am 
so grateful to you for trusting me, and I should be 
so much more grateful if you would let me help you. 
I have not the least idea how you are placed ; but, 
you see, I have the strongest motives a man can 
have for wanting to help you. Will you tell me 


248 THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 

what you can of your trouble? Even after our last 
meeting at the Academy I did an unwarrantable 
thing. I had not seen you in the Park or anywhere 
else for so long. I couldn’t stand it any longer. I 
went to your house to inquire. You were in Paris, 
they said ; and soon after I saw an announcement 
that you were married. It was only a few hours 
ago that the wonderful idea that you were still free 
dawned upon me, when I came upon you, as Miss 
Drew , in the Luxembourg/' 

44 1 am not free!” said Portia, in low tones. “I 
was married the day I ran away ! ” 

The announcement was followed by a dead silence. 
Harry had received what is called, in pugilistic lore, 
a staggerer. The hope that had beat so high an in- 
stant ago went out suddenly, leaving utter blackness 
behind. The “one maid, by Heaven’s grace,” in 
all the world for him was another man’s wife. It 
was the bride of a week that he was wooing here in 
this unholy atmosphere, in the midst of the stifling 
crowd. Do battle for her he would, as he had pledged 
himself to do, but without hope of guerdon. She 
would always be more to him than any other woman 
in the world, but the 44 bright particular star” shining 
overhead in attendance upon the pale moon was not 
farther removed from his sphere than she. Some 
men, learning what he had learned, would have given 
vent to an oath under their breath. Harry said 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 


249 


nothing. Portia, on her side, maintained an equal 
silence. There was nothing to add to her avowal. 
She was chewing the cud of her own weakness and 
folly, and very bitter it tasted. By what right had 
she trampled down the holy instinct that had rendered 
John's arrival a terror to her the morning she returned 
from the Academy, with her mind full of Harry's pic- 
ture, and her heart full of But she had never 

owned that to herself before this evening. A little 
resolution — a great deal of resolution even — for the 
united wills of John and Wilmer and Emma made a 
barrier difficult to overcome — might she not have 
called it to her aid when all her life's happiness was 
at stake ? Oh, if Harry had only spoken before ! If, 
instead of looking his sympathy as he bade her good- 
bye in crowded Piccadilly, he had said the simple 
words “I love you ! " her heart would have responded 
instantly. She would not have lacked the courage 
to fight her battle then. She would have gone armed 
and strong to the contest. But he had given her no 
such weapon to fight with. He had shown her a 
picture that thrust itself into the foreground, and him 
into the background. And she had been given no 
time for resistance, hardly time for resignation, before 
her fate had been sealed. And nothing but those 
dreary words “ it might have been” — ‘'the saddest,” 
as the poet has told us, “of all the sad words of 
tongue or pen ” — remained for her to fall back upon 


now. 


250 the PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 

They had been making their way along a line of 
cheap shops and stalls, whence the acrid odours of 
pommes friies hissing in rancid fat, of slopped-over 
counters at the marchands de vin, mingled with the 
fumes of cigars at two for a sou, filled the air. Harry 
thought bitterly that it was a fitting background for 
the snuffing out of his love idyll. But, after the first 
sharp pang of personal disappointment, pity for the 
woman by his side overcame his egoistic suffering. 
It must be a dire tragedy in a young life that could 
drive a bride from the bridegroom's arms on the day 
that consecrated their union. And he had promised 
to help her. It might be that there were wrongs to 
redress, or, if redress were no longer possible, to 
avenge. In a few moments more the opportunity 
for. speaking would be gone— perhaps for ever. Mr. 
Eames, who had never shown himself in so officious 
a light before, was looking round, and pointing ahead 
of him along the street. At the Gaiete Montparnasse 
there would be no possibility of exchanging a word. 
He hardly regretted now that the crowd should push 
against them so roughly. It gave him an excuse for 
loitering behind, and saying all that remained to be 
said. The silence that had seemed so long had en- 
dured perhaps only a few seconds before he was 
replying to her words : 

“ That's about as bad a piece of news as you could 
give me ; it's no use telling you how I feel about it. 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 


251 


The question is, can anything be done to help you ? 
I suppose you didn't run away on your wedding-day 
without having a reason for it ! ” 

“I had a reason." Her voice had regained its 
wonted calm, and every word fell distinctly on her 
hearers understanding. “The very day I was 
married, and just as I was on the point of going away 
with — with my husband, a woman came with a little 
baby. She told me my husband did not belong to 
me at all — that he belonged by rights to her . The 
little baby was theirs," she said. “She was the 
woman whom you had put into your picture of the 
Madonna. I understood, when I saw her, why it 
seemed to me that I must have seen something that 
reminded me of that picture when you showed it me 
for the first time. The eyes you had painted — the 
baby's eyes, you know — are so exactly like those of 
— of my husband." 

“But he isn't your husband at all, thank God ! " 
exclaimed Harry, eagerly. “ He's only a miserable 
impostor ! He need never cross your path again 
unless you choose. Why did you run away ? Were 
you afraid to denounce him 1 Did you — did you care 
for him ? " 

His voice sank as he asked the question, but Portia 
heard it and understood. Her answer nevertheless 
was slow in coming. If she should say Yes , she 
would be telling an untruth ; if she said No, wath 


252 THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 

must he think of her? What would any man think 
of a woman who would go in cold blood to the altar 
to swear eternal love to a man for whom she cared 
nothing ? 

“ I thought I cared for him,” she said at last, em- 
ploying the same subterfuge as she had had recourse 
to in her communings with herself. “We had been 
engaged almost since I was a little girl, and he had 
come from Australia on purpose to marry me. Every* 
thing was changed when I found out the truth.” 

“And you found it out directly you came out ot 
the church ? ” insisted Harry, in a husky, eager 
voice strangely unlike his usual measured utterance, 
“ What a Heaven-sent miracle of salvation that was ! ” 

He took off his hat for an instant, and wiped his 
forehead, round which the perspiration was pearling 
in thick beads. 

“I was getting ready to go away upon my wed- 
ding trip with Mr. Morrisson, when Mary came and 
stopped me,” Portia explained ; but Harry interrupted 
her sharply : 

“ Morrisson ! Is that the man's name ? My model 
called herself Mrs. Morris.” 

“Did she?” The words that came next dealt a 
frosh stab to her hearer’s heart. “I am afraid it 
would not have been so easy to stay behind after all 
and denounce him , as you say I should have done, 
For I don’t think somehow the woman — was — was 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES, 


*53 

married to him at all. He had promised to marry 
her, and that seems just as binding in reality. But by 
law he was married to me. I was afraid they might 
force me to go on being his wife if I stayed behind, 
so I just ran away.” 

“ What ! You ran away alone ? ” 

“ Yes, quite alone ; but I knew that Anna would 
take me in, and that she would hide me until we had 
decided what I should do. She is a very good friend. ” 

“Y — yes,” assented Harry, doubtfully. ‘VI am 
sure she means to be ; but she has her own way of 
interpreting social obligations. It's unusual, to say 
the least of it.” 

14 They are signing to us to come,” interrupted Por- 
tia, hastily. “ Let me just say thank you once more.” 

“ If there were only something to thank me for. 
Tell me, could you not be in the Luxembourg, just 
where we met you to-day, at the same hour to-mor- 
row ? I have such a great wish to be of use to you 
if I can.” 

“I will try. Only please don't let them think we 
have been talking about anything out of the way 
now.” 

Her injunction did not come too soon. Mr. Eames 
had retraced his steps, and was hastening towards 
them as she spoke. 

“Miss Ross's orders are that you hurry up,” he 
said. “ I give the message verbatim. It seems that 


254 THE PENANCE OF P 0 RT 1 A JAMES . 

there is a new programme on to-night. Garmon in- 
augurates his latest ‘ (Ja la fait rire/ and all the best 
places are taken.” 

“You needn't stay longer than you like," whis- 
pered Harry to his companion, as Mr. Eames elbowed 
a way for her through the crowd. “Only make me 
a sign when you are tired." 

She nodded. They had rejoined Anna by this time 
and found her standing as though rooted to one spot, 
with an expression upon her face that seemed to say 
not all the powers of darkness and the Quartier 
Montparnasse combined should cause her to budge 
from it. 

“How you dawdled!" she said to her friend. 
“We'd better make haste in now," and she led the 
way through a broad, covered passage that conducted 
into the body of the building. Portia found herself, 
as soon as the glare of the gas and the haze of the 
tobacco-smoke allowed her to take stock of her sur- 
roundings, in a small theatre of shabby appoint- 
ments. Just as she had felt upon her first intro- 
duction to Clootz's, she felt here now. If she had 
dared to exercise her private right of judgment, very 
more than rather awful would have most appropriately 
rendered her impressions. The spectators were on a 
par with the theatre — not that they were shabby, but 
they were dressed for the most part in the garments 
in which they earned their livelihood by the “sweat 


the penance oe Portia James. 255 

of their brow ” ; and the fact was patent to more than 
one of her senses. Some were ambulant vendors of 
oranges, crevettes , and other street delicacies. Others 
— the aristocracy these — belonged to the petit-bour- 
geois order, and were mostly habitues of the Gaiete. 
Sometimes their wives accompanied them ; more fre- 
quently the wife remained away to mind the shop. 
There was a scattered contingent of grisettes — not 
unaccompanied — and a sprinkling of students and 
artists, with or without the latter. The seats that 
Anna found were a little behind the orchestra, and, 
having a broad ledge in front of them, conveyed a 
grotesque suggestion to Portia’s mind of pews in a 
church. There were no prayer-books, however, only 
consommations of divers kinds — bocks, mazagrans , 
and petits verves ranged thereupon. 

“ You’ll have to take something,” Anna explained 
to her as they sat down. “ Would you like to taste 
what absinthe is like? You need only put your lips 
to it.” 

“Oh, please not,” cried Portia, “I’ll have coffee, 
with milk in it.” The coffee was brought in a long 
tumbler. It bore a very medicinal appearance, and 
was accompanied by three slabs of unsweetening 
sugar that seemed to have been provided to take the 
taste away. The party of four was seated in a row, 
Portia between her two admirers. Mr. Eames, to 
make up for time wasted, addressed all his con versa- 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 256 

tion to her. The orchestra was playing the waltz 
from Madame Angot as they entered, and the curtain 
was up, displaying a tawdry stage, with faded 
draperies in the background. Portia had never seen 
a music-hall performance of any kind before. When 
an ingenuous-looking youth with an occasional twist 
of the mouth that signified unutterable things came 
on the stage and proceeded to sing a dozen verses 
with the invariable refrain of “Sije connaissais mon 
papa,” and when he set forth in detail the various 
indulgences he would allow himself could the words of 
the refrain be realized, she laughed out loud and 
thought the performance exceedingly funny, without 
in the least comprehending the drift of it. Her naive 
enjoyment of it delighted Mr. Eames. Harry, on the 
contrary, looked as John Knox might have looked 
when he was thundering in Marys presence against 
the French levity of her blood. The scabreux element 
in the Gaiete songs, which was the salt of the enter- 
tainment to the rest of the audience, repelled and 
disgusted him. Without that element they were fade 
and meaningless. It distressed him to see Portia 
laughing in the innocence of her heart at jokes of 
which the hidden meaning would have revolted her 
had she been capable of understanding it. And what 
an epilogue her appearance here was to her marriage ! 
A week-old bride, fresh from her girlhood's home, 
seated between two men who were both intent upon 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 


25 7 

wooing her, laughing at utterances that she should 
have ignored all her life, in company with a crowd 
who set her down in all likelihood as the mistress of 
one or of both. Allowance must be made for Harry 
if he exaggerated the situation in his mind. He had 
worshipped this woman next to him as the incarna- 
tion of a dream of innocent purity, and it hurt and 
angered him beyond endurance to see the white wings 
of his divinity smirched by contact with the gross 
things of earth. 

The next song pleased Portia even better. The 
singer was a woman, who, though very plump, 
looked still very young, and who wore an expression 
of artless innocence which was almost angelic. She 
sang of an interview with “ Monsieur le Cure/' and 
though the air was undeniably pretty, since Portia 
understood very little French, and could follow none 
of the words, it was somewhat of a bewilderment to 
her to see the audience laugh so boisterously at it. 
This was followed by a performance which was a 
relief to Harry’s overstrained feelings. Like the dish 
of sugared rose-leaves that Eastern epicures insert in 
a succession ofhighly-seasoned plats , it turned upon 
birds and springtime — upon bucolic joys and pastoral 
pleasures. It was sung by an elegantly dressed lady 
and had a succes d’estime. Harry expressed his satis- 
faction for the first time, but relapsed into moody 
silence a moment later when the far-famed Garmon 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 258 

made his appearence, and was hailed with derisive 
shouts of welcome from the audience. Gabon's 
role was to look like a fool, and he was dressed ac- 
cordingly. He wore a red wig, and trousers that 
were too short for him. His face, which was blonde 
and shaven, had an expression of mingled imbecility 
and ruse that was in itself a triumph of art. He 
could put on an air of naivete that was almost 
pathetic in its intensity, and could condense such vol- 
umes of suggestion into a mere quivering of the eye- 
lid that his least gesture was the signal for a laugh. 
Gabon’s song of the evening had a refrain called 
“ Ca la fait rire,” and described his wooing and wed- 
ding of a certain Josephine. It was boisterously 
encored — and at the end of it Harry shot a rapid 
glance in the direction of his neighbour. Portia had 
laughed delightedly at Gabon’s face at the outset, but 
now she was looking away with a grave and some- 
what terrified expression. Despite the heat, her cheeks 
and even her lips were pale. Mr. Eames was affect- 
ing to be engrossed in his programme. Garmon had 
souligned his song in a way that, even to the com- 
prehension of an utterly unversed and unsuspecting 
person like our heroine, conveyed a hint of its turbid 
depths, and Portia had been seized with a sudden 
misgiving. 

“ Haven't you had almost enough of this?” Harry 
said shortly to his neighbour. “ I think your friend 
has.” 


THE PENANCE OP PORT! A JAMES. 


259 

“Take her away, then/' replied Miss Ross, with- 
out looking round. “I will follow when I please." 

“Miss Ross thinks you are looking tired," was his 
next observation, addressed this time to Portia ; he 
had ventured upon a free translation of Anna’s words ; 
“ and so I think you are. Won’t you let me see you 
home ? It isn’t really worth stopping in this bad air 
for, is it ? ” 

“ By the bye, I ought to be in too ; I have no end 
of letters to write,’’ observed Mr. Eames, jumping up 
suddenly. “I can see Miss Drew ba^k, if she will 
let me. I know this thing from end to end. You'd 
better see it out with Miss Ross, Tolhurst.’’ 

“Thanks!’’ said Harry, grimly; he tried to put 
himself in his friend’s place, and to remember that, in 
the ignorance in which the latter remained of the real 
aspect of the case, his conduct in attempting to mon- 
opolise Miss Drew’s society must appear like that of 
an impertinent interloper. And Eames had confided 
in him too — had hinted that he was on the point of 
losing his heart to Miss Ross’s friend, if he had not 
lost it already. Nevertheless, Harry was loth to see 
the pair depart together, and his hesitation was so 
apparent that Anna said indignantly, “ I won’t have 
one of you three remain. If you do, I shall go — and 
I don’t want to be driven away. I will come back 
when I please and as I please.’’ 

“You must let one of us stay to see you home,’’ 
urged Harry, reluctantly. 


26 O the PENNACE OF PORTIA j AMES . 

“To see me home ! Poor little dear ! ” No rea- 
soned refutation could have been half so convincing 
as the briefly-uttered mocking rejoinder, into which 
she infused all the scorn that stirred her soul. “You 
do look tired, child/' she observed, as Portia turned 
round to smile farewell at her. “Take a cup of tea 
when you get back — you may give them some too," 
nodding in the direction of the two young men, who 
stood up in eager readiness to bear her away. “And 
keep the kettle on, will you ? I dare say I shall bring 
Rousky back with me." 

The party of three did not prove much more satis- 
factory, after all, than the party of four, to Mr. 
Eames's thinking. Harry said but little, certainly ; 
his presence made it impossible to talk of other than 
indifferent subjects. No allusion was made to the 
place they had left. Portia felt a sudden and unac- 
countable diffidence in referring to it. The only 
thing it suggested to her mind was a dim recollection 
of a childish experience she had had years ago when 
she had run to pluck a beautiful rose-bough in the 
Yarraman garden. As she stretched out her hand for 
the rose a cluster of caterpillar larvae, one moving 
mass of black corruption, curled and wriggled round 
the stem. She had burst into tears and run away. 
Besides the disgust inspired by the larvae, there was 
the degradation of the poor rose to afflict her. The 
tuneful singing she had heard a while ago made her 


THE PENANCE OF POP TIA JAMES. 2 6 1 


think of this experience anew. But it was not a 
thing to be discussed aloud. She invited her two 
escorts into Anna's room — and despite the letters that 
Mr. Eames had on his mind, he eagerly responded to 
the invitation. 


CHAPTER XVIII. 

It was under the shelter of the effigy of one of the 
earlier French queens, clad in the stiff, cumbersome 
garments of her time, beneath the stone presentment 
of which the chisel of even a French sculptor had 
been unable to suggest the existence of a womans 
form, that Portia had her promised interview with 
Harry the next day. Early as she had arrived at the 
trysting place, he was there before her. She had 
recognized him from afar off, as she advanced slowly, 
with a step that spoke of inward trepidation, towards 
the bench upon which he was seated. In accepting 
his offer of help, as in promising to see him alone, 
she was doing nothing for which her conscience need 
smite her. Yet so unused was Portia to anything 
that savoured of deception, that even this innocent 
cachotterie set her trembling. There was no one to 
watch her here, no one to whom she need feel herself 
accountable for her comings and goings. Yet there 
was such a startled expression in her eyes of curious 
hue, those eyes that Harry knew so well and thought 


262 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 263 

of so often, that the sight of them moved him with 
pity. Her manner had none of the confident buoy- 
ancy that had marked it when she mounted the Acad- 
emy steps radiant, and smiling a few weeks ago. 
She wore what seemed to him a haunted look, and 
to reassure her he essayed to speak of commonplace 
subjects in the easy tones of one who meets unpre- 
meditatedly a mere casual acquaintance. 

“ How do you do ?” he shook her hand cordially. 

“ Isn't it a lovely afternoon for sitting out under the 
trees? I have found such a pleasant seat over there. 
I was looking up through the branches of the yellow 
leaves hidden in the green. Have you ever seen an 
autumn in the Luxembourg? ” 

“No,” she replied; she was beginning to feel a 
little more at her ease now, and she took her seat by 
his side on the bench. “I have seen only one au- 
tumn in Europe, but it seemed to me almost too 
wonderful to be real. We have no autumn in Aus- 
tralia, you know. We were travelling through Switz- 
erland. It was the end of October, and the Alps 
were covered with snow to their base. The trees — 
those tell Lombardy poplars — had lost none of their 
leaves, but they had turned a golden yellow all over. 
The weather was lovely, and the sky was a shining 
blue. When I saw the golden trees growing out of 
the dazzling white snow, I thought it too wonderful — 
I could not have believed a landscape could ever 
come to to look like that/' 


264 7 HE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 

“ I know the effect you speak of,” Harry said, mus- 
ing. “ Out of the thousand autumn picture one sees, 
I have never seen that particular combination exactly 
rendered. I think, though, the most gorgeous autumn 
scene I ever beheld was on the shores of the Bos- 
phorus. You have been to Constantinople? No! 
Then I don't know how I am to give you any idea 
in words of the riotous medley of colours you see from 
a distance.” 

He essayed nevertheless, warming to his sub- 
ject as he recalled every marvellous detail of the 
brilliant panorama, bright and many-hued as a par- 
rot's wing. Portia listened in silence. She had for- 
gotten for the moment the chain that bound her. She 
was walking in imagination through the enchanted 
scenes Harry was word-painting for her, scenes that 
had not existed for her hitherto, save in the pages of 
the Arabian Nighis or of Lalla Rookh , the two sources 
whence she had drawn, it is to be feared, her prin- 
cipal knowledge of an Oriental mise-en-scene. A 
sense of the boundless delights the world had to 
offer to two minds in entire sympathy grew upon 
her as she listened. And the possibility of such joys 
as these had been within her reach ! — she would 
have had but to stretch out her hand to grasp it at 
the very moment when she' had deliberately and 
recklessly flung it away ! For a moment she could 
have wished that, like Anna, she had asserted her 


THE PENANCE OF PORT! A JAMES . 265 

right to do as she pleased before marriage instead of 
after it. The artist band in Paris would soon be 
dispersing now, and each would go his separate way 
without let or hindrance. Why, even if the Swedish 
girls and her friend should go to Constantinople, nd 
one would say them nay, and on their return they 
would find the same atelier , the same table at Clootz's, 
the same interests and associations open to them as 
before. Perhaps Anna was right, after all. It was 
the people themselves who spoiled the world, either 
by violence, or by restrictions, or by interference with 
each other's movements ; and it was only those who 
heeded none of these things, and who went their own 
ways, who could find any satisfaction in living. 

Reflections of this nature brought Portia back to 
the actual circumstances of her position. It was 
one thing to wander in fancy with Harry against 
an intangible Oriental background, and quite an- 
other to be found with Mr. Tolhurst against the 
actul background of the Luxembourg Gardens. Des- 
pite Anna's “ live and let live "principle, she would 
not have cared to see her cross the gardens just 
now. Portia felt herself, indeed, something of a trait- 
ress to her friend, for had she not come out this 
afternoon to take counsel of another all unknown to 
her? 

“ After what you said last night," she began, sud- 
denly and irrelevantly, as she traced unconscious 


266 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 


patterns on the gravel-path at her feet with the point 
of her parasol (many a hieroglyph drawn by the point 
of a womans parasol is the unenduring record of 
some paramount passage in her life’s history), “I 
know I need not be afraid to tell you everything and 
to ask you what you think I had better do.” 

She paused irresolute, her eyes still fixed upon the 
ground. Harry, for his part, was hanging on her every 
word. He could not see her face, for she persisted in 
keeping her head down, but he had a view of the 
lower half of her charming profile, and his imagina- 
tion filled up the remainder. He had known lie 
loved her from the beginning ; but in accordance 
with the irony of Fate, he must needs be deprived of 
the opportunity of avowing it until just after she had 
contracted marriage with another man. Meeting her 
during the crisis that followed, he must find himself 
in the position of her counsellor and mentor, instead 
of her wooer, and must force himself to give her the 
very same advice that he would have given to a 
cherished sister under like circumstances. Here, at 
least, was his clearly defined duty, but it was a duty 
that promised to be all the harder of fulfilment, that 
something in Portia’s manner seemed to tell him that 
if she had still possessed her freedom he would not 
have wooed her in vain. That was a maddening 
thought for a man situated as he was. Portia, in 
asking him to decide for her, was surrendering her- 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 267 

self virtually into his hands. Her action in marry- 
ing a man she did not love simply because she had 
no power to resist surrounding influences, her flight 
immediately after the marriage, and her helplessness 
and irresolution when the flight was accomplished — 
all this seemed to prove to him that she was without 
the moral support known as backbone (an appro- 
priate designation, since it is only with the verte- 
brates that the faculty of resisting our environments 
seems to have been evolved). He had suspected as 
much before, but he did not love her the less for it. 
He would have had backbone enough for both if he 
could have made her his wife. He reproached him- 
self bitterly in secret with his faint-heartedness upon 
the memorable day when he had shown her his pic- 
ture of the Madonna. Perhaps that day had been the 
turning-point in their lives, and he had not known 
how to seize it. Yet how could he have imagined 
that she was about to slip out of his life for ever ? 
They had been such entire friends that morning— it 
would have seemed almost an easy matter to say to 
her then, “You know I love you ! do you not? and 
I want you to be my wife, if you will.” But he had 
not dared to say it. He had allowed worldly con- 
siderations to weigh with him. He was not so sure 
of making his mark then as he felt now. Portia was 
spoken of as an heiress, and he had nothing but his 
art and his work to set against her fortune. People 


268 the PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 

would have said that he had taken undue advantage 
of the first chance of winning the heiress that had 
fallen in his way. He had been moved by consid- 
erations which after all would have been reasonable 
enough under ordinary circumstances. Yet it re- 
quired no little effort to remember at this moment 
how he was situated towards Portia, and to give her 
the counsel that honour and duty demanded he 
should give her. “What do you think I had better 
do ? ” she had asked, and her words echoed through 
his brain, and raised a strange tumult in his heart. 
He felt that he had only to say, “Of course, you 
must stay where you are,” and in a very short time, 
in a school like Anna’s — under an influence like Anna’s 
— he might persuade her of his Heaven-sent right to 
become all in all to her. And, once he had per- 
suaded her of this, legal formalities might be deferred 
for subsequent regulation. Her relations would 
move Heaven and earth, or rather the Church and 
the State, to have her union with him properly ra- 
tified, and to have the other meaningless ceremony 
annulled. But let her return to England now, and 
all their influence and power would be employed to 
force her back into the unholy bonds that she had 
been driven into against her will at the outset. 

“ You ask me what you are to do,” he said at last 
slowly ; he would not avow that he shrank from the 
responsibility laid upon him. “Will you answer 


THE PENANCE OF POE Tl A JAMES. 269 

me one question first? Supposing you were con- 
vinced that the man you married most bitterly re- 
pented the sin that drove you away from him — sup- 
posing this woman, Mrs. Morris, or whatever she 
calls herself, could be spirited away, right away, no 
matter where — would you still have the some horror 
of returning to your husband ? Would you want to 
separate your life from his under any circumstances ? 
I am more anxious then I can say to advise you for 
the best. I thought I must be dreaming yesterday 
when I came upon you suddenly in the Luxembourg ; 
but afterwards, as I thought over your story in the 
night, the dream seemed to turn into a nightmare. 
I can advise you up to a certain point, but your own 
feelings are what you should consult before all. If 
this obstacle had not arisen, the thought of running 
away would never have entered into your head." 

He made this assertion doubtfully, almost interroga- 
tively. Portia continued to trace patterns with the 
point of her parasol. The first autumn leaves were 
fluttering down upon her in the soft evening breeze. 

“I had thought of doing it before," she said at 
last, in a scarcely audible voice; 4 ‘but never after I 
was once married." 

Pleasant sounds were wandering to the bench 
where they sat. The distant babble of children's 
voices, the twittering of the fearless sparrows, the 
mingled cadence of falling water and rustling leaves, 


270 THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 

all these would have made a soothing accompani- 
ment to the beating of a peaceful heart. But Harry's 
heart was far from being peaceful. Disappointment 
unspeakable was causing it to ache and throb. He 
loved this woman by his side. She was weak be- 
yond all believing. She had allowed herself to be 
married almost in spite of herself. There were none 
of the elements of a Bride of Lammermoor in her 
nature. Nevertheless he loved her. Her personality 
had a charm for him that set all reasoning at defi- 
ance. Her very weakness attracted him. How en- 
tirely she would have leaned upon him if he could 
have won her for himself, to have and to hold till 
death parted him from her. But now it was his 
bounden duty to send her away from him. The 
longer she stayed with Anna, the more critical her 
position would become. There were dangers around 
her of which she could have no understanding. Even 
as it was, would not the shadow of her rash action 
hang like a dark cloud over all her future life? 
Moreover, there was the moral aspect of the question 
to be considered. Had she not taken upon herself 
solemn vows in the most solemn place in the 
world ? Harry Tolhurst possessed what is known 
as the religious temperament. The fact that the 
marriage rite had been actually performed was one 
that had great weight with him. The evening before 
he had supposed for an instant that Portia's husband 


THE PENANCE OE PORTIA JAMES . 271 

had committed bigamy, in which event her own 
share in the vows she had taken would have counted 
for nothing. But the marriage, as he now knew, 
was a valid one, and the religious service could not 
be gainsaid. He reviewed the case rapidly in his 
mind before he said gently, but firmly : 

* 4 Then you had counted the cost! And the dis- 
covery you made after your marriage is all we have 
to think of.” 

“Yes, I suppose so.” There was something 
hopelesely despondent in her manner of assent. “I 
thought we might arrange something here ; but it 
does not seem like it now. Anna wants me to stay 
with her at all costs. She wants me to become a 
model ” — Harry fancied he could detect a slight 
tremor in her voice — “but I don’t see my way. I 
feel as though I were drifting, as though I were 
rudderless — if you can understand.” 

“Indeed I can ; ” his tones were full of sympathy. 
“ I was on board a ship once that had lost her 
rudder. There is always great danger of drifting on 
to the rocks. Now, if you will let me advise, I 
think you ought to go home directly. Go and put 
yourself under your brothers protection. You seem 
to have run away just to escape from a position in 
which you felt yourself helpless to act. But when 
you go back things will have arranged themselves, 
There is no risk of your being forced to act now 


THE PENANCE OE PORTIA JAMES. 


2J2 

without due time for reflection. And you will be 
safer there than here. Believe me you will. Miss 
Ross's home is no place for you." 

All the time he was urging her to depart, his 
heart was crying out to him to bid her remain. But 
for the very reason that he was doing a violence to 
his secret desires, his spoken words were vehement. 
Portia could have no conception of the extent to 
which she tried him by her reply. 

“Then I know how it will all end !” she said 
piteously. “John cares for me terribly" (it was 
the first time he had heard her speak of her husband 
as John) ; “he will never hear of anything but my 
returning to him, and he will have talked the others 
over by now." 

To this Harry made no rejoinder until he had 
gathered strength sufficient to say, “Even that 
would be better than following out Anna’s plan of 
life — I think." 

“Do you think so? Oh! I wish you could hear 
her talk ! " She paused, and continued rapidly, without 
looking at him, “Unless people come together from 
sheer love of each other, and only stay together just 
as long as the want to do so is there, it is all wrong 
and unnatural, she says. She talks about it so 
wonderfully sometimes ; I wish you could hear her. " 

“Oh ! I know the free love doctrine," Harry said 
grimly. “Listen." Portia raised her head in aston- 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 273 

ishment, his voice and manner were solemn. “ I am 
going to speak to you, if I can, as father, brother, 
lover — all in one. For I want you to understand 
that I love you better than myself. Do you know 
that if it were to any one but me you quoted Anna's 
words, you would be doing a very risky thing ? 
People might not understand. Supposing I were to 
take advantage of the fact that you are Anna's disciple 
to uphold her doctrine to you on my own account. 
Do you know where it would lead us ? It would 
lead, in the first place, to my trying to compass your 
ruin. If love and inclination are to be the only 
arbiters ; if honour and duty and self-control are to 
have no say in the matter at all, what is to prevent 
my acting upon the impulse that moves me now ? 
What is to prevent my entreating you to try and care 
for me a little? Why should I not say, Forget all 
the ghastly business of the other day, and let us 
begin a new life together here. Don’t look terrified " 
(for Portia had turned a face of pale astonishment 
towards him), * ‘ I care for you too truly to say it" — 
his voice was trembling with agitation. ft I care for 
you for yourself my dear. That means, that I set 
too great a value upon your peace of mind, and your 
reputation, to ever want you to fling them away 
for me. There are things that count for more than 
love " 

He broke off suddenly. Portia's eyes were 
18 


274 THE PENANCE OF PORT! A JAMES . 

suffused. He felt that his resolution was giving way. 
If she continued to look at him like that it would 
abandon him altogether ; or, rather, it would expend 
itself in words, while, in obedience to the overmas- 
tering instinct that stirred him, his arm would steal 
round her neck, and his lips would seek hers. 

But Portia had lowered her eyes again. “ I know 
why you speak like that, ” she said. “ You are think- 
ing of what is to come afterwards — after we are dead, 
I mean/' 

“ Yes ! ” he replied. “ I believe in a future, too. 
I think we are called upon most often to climb the 
steep and thorny path to Heaven/' 

“ But if one did not think that ! ” she was transfix- 
ing the withered leaves at her feet with her parasol, 
and sweeping them over the hieroglyphs on the 
gravel. 

“ If one did not think that,” he repeated. But his 
voice changed ; Anna and Mr. Eames, walking side 
by side, were advancing towards them under the 
trees. The dissatisfaction of the latter was apparent 
in his step. It is not only the facial muscles ; every 
muscle of the body expresses moods — witness the 
difference in the outline, however distant, of a boy 
on his way to be caned, and the same boy out for a 
holiday. 

4 4 Found at last ! ” said Anna, triumphantly. There 
was a mocking gleam in her black eyes as Portia rose 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 275 

in confusion to greet her. '‘See, I have a telegram 
for you. I dare say it's only a device on the part of 
your friends to get you away. ” 

The message delivered into Portia’s hands had 
been through double forms. Addressed in the first 
instance to the suburban post-office in London where 
Anna’s friend called for the letters she transmitted to 
the runaway, it had been re-telegraphed by her to 
Paris. Portia ran her eyes over it hurriedly. The 
signature which caught her eye first was Eliza’s and 
the message was to the following effect : 

"Come back. Mary Willet run over; not ex- 
pected to live. Wants you immediately.” 

Portia to the profound and jealous astonishment of 
Mr. Eames, put this dispatch into Harry’s hands at 
once. She had turned pale to the lips as she read the 
contents. Harry felt that some explanation was due 
to the others. 

" We have found out,” he said hurriedly, " that we 
have a friend — Miss — er — Drew and I whom we are 
both in Paris to assist. I suppose,” he added, turn- 
ing gravely to her, "you will go to her at once — 
won’t you ? ” 

" Yes ; oh, yes ! ” There was sharp distress in her 
tones. “ I will leave for England to-night.” 


CHAPTER XIX. 


Portia was not suffered to repeat the experience 
that attended her flight from London, as she took her 
hurried departure from Paris a few hours later. Four 
people saw her off at the Gare du Nord by the night 
train for Calais. Mr. Eames, who sadly realised that 
his designation of her as a beautiful bird of passage 
had been only too appropriate, was among them. 
Neither he nor his friend, between whom and himself 
a marked coldness had sprung up, dared to put into 
execution a project that both had secretly cherished 
of offering to escort her to London. Portia was con- 
scious of a slight sense of shame as she stood at the 
window of the first-class ladies' compartment to wish 
her friends good-bye. She felt that to indulge in 
luxurious travelling was a backsliding ; besides which 
Anna and Rousky scorned all save third-class fares. 

Nevertheless, as the train moved smoothly off, to 
the satisfaction of everybody (for the whole party, 
was fast relapsing into the condition of mental vacuity 
that prolonged railway-station farewells engender), 
she could not be indifferent to the fact that here at 
least she might think over things in comfortable and 

276 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA /AMES. 


2 77 

cushioned solitude. The news of Mary’s accident 
had shocked her profoundly. It seemed as though 
the mysterious message of Harry’s Madonna had not 
been fully delivered even yet. The final words had 
still to be spoken. Portia believed now that from the 
first moment of beholding the picture she had recog- 
nised the power that would henceforth control her 
destiny. At Mary’s call she had fled from her home ; 
at the same call she was returning to it now. On 
Mary’s behoof she had put her husband away from 
her. What might she not be called upon to do next ! 
Her thoughts travelled backwards and forwards be- 
tween Anna’s qualribne and the rose-embowered Ken- 
sington home. She reflected that only where a 
woman’s affections are fixed there can she cast her 
anchor. Perhaps it was the impossibility of so fixing 
them that made Anna renounce all home ties and 
lead a vagrant life. She had a dim suspicion that 
Anna dragged her anchor from time to time, and 
that, despite her apparent indifference, she was one 
of those whom the “howling winds,” would drive 
devious, tempest-tossed to the end of her days. This 
time there was no moonlit landscape to mingle its 
fantastic glories with the dreams our heroine was 
weaving. The reign of the August moon was over, 
and a warm darkness covered the face of the earth. 
The tide of voyagers was setting from, not towards, 
the English shores. Portia might have been wander- 


278 THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 

in g with ghosts through an impalpable limbo for all 
the communion she held with her few fellow-passen- 
gers on the journey. It was hardly past sunrise when 
she arrived at Victoria Station and found herself once 
again under the familiar overhung London sky. Her 
hair felt dank against her temples as she drove to 
Kensington. The trees in the Park looked black and 
drooping. Where was the radiant green, shining be- 
hind a shimmery silver veil, that she remembered so 
well? She leaned back in her cab and closed her 
eyes wearily. She could not have believed that all 
could change so utterly above and around her, with- 
out and within, in so short a space of time. 

Portia had never so fully realised that she had put 
herself into the position of an outcast as upon her 
return to her home at this early hour of the day. As 
no one expected her, no one was up to receive her. 
The cabman was obliged to hammer at the door and 
ring the area bell persistently, with an oft-repeated 
“that' 11 bring 'em out!” before the blue-and-silver 
footman, stripped of his distinguishing trappings, 
proceeded to unlock and unchain the front door. The 
person to whom he opened it scuttled past him with 
a short “Good morning, William!” to her room. 
It annoyed her to feel sure that the first thing he 
would do would be to clatter round to the servant's re- 
gions to give the news of her return redhot. She found 
the door of her room locked, and it was necessary to 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 279 

climb another storey to wake Nurse Eliza, who pro- 
bably kept the key. And Eliza, once awakened, 
would not let her go. Time had been when Portia 
had crept into the faithful creatures bed upon thun- 
dery nights at Yarraman, when the vision of the 
picture of devils in Wilmer’s illustrated copy of the 
Ingoldsby Legends , over the words 

“ Then did she reek, and squeak, and shriek, 

With a wild, unearthly yell.” 

had recurred to her with disagreeable force every 
time the lightning flashed. She recognised, just as 
of old, the row of light little plaits into which Eliza 
was wont to twist her hair, to give it a wave the 
following day. 

“ Did you plait up your hair the day I ran away, 
Eliza?” were her first words, as she sat upon the 
edge of her nurse's bed, after she had roused her by 
lightly kissing her upon the forehead. 

“ Don't tell me it's you come back ! ” cried Eliza, 
joyfully but irrelevantly. “ It's too good to be true.” 

“ You knew I would be obliged to come when you 
sent me that message.” Portia had flung down her 
hat ; her chestnut hair was ruffled into softest disor- 
der, and her face was pale with the mingled effects 
of her night journey and the excitement of her 
home-coming. “Poor, poor Mary! is it as bad as 
you thought ? ” 


28 o the PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 

“ It’s very bad, my dear,” Eliza made reply, sitting 
up in bed and looking gravely at her ; “ but it hadn't 
ought to have been any business of yours. Such 
goings on I never saw in my life ! That Mary Willet 
doesn't know what shame means ; and her family so 
respectable, too ! But there, you was always too 
good-hearted. Don't I remember when you used to 
cry fit to break your heart every time they were going 
to stick a pig at the station ! ” 

“Oh! never mind about the pig; tell me about 
Mary. When did she send for me? Where is she? 
How did it happen ? Who says she can't live? " 

“Miss, I can't tell you everything all in a minute. 
I only know this much : a woman came round here 
from Mary Willet's lodgings yesterday, just as I was 
setting out the flowers for lunch. ‘ Mrs. Morris ' — 
that's the name the hussy gave herself — ‘Mrs. Morris 
has been run over,' she says, ‘ and she can’t die easy, 
she says, without Miss James goes to see her.' Mr. 
James, he said I was to telegraph straight off to the 
place where I used for to send your letters ; and its just 
a chance they called for the telegram and sent it off 
to you so soon, though I expect you weren't very far 
off, if the truth were known.” 

“Far enough to take ten hours to get back. But I 
must go to Mary at once ! " cried Portia, springing 
from the bed. “ She is expected to die, you say, and 
here I sit doing nothing at all. I won't disturb the 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 281 

others now. Give me her address, quick, and let me 

go." 

She had been plunging a towel into the water-jug 
as she spoke, and now passed it rapidly over her 
face. Her hat and veil were on in an instant. “ The 
address, Eliza ! ” she repeated impatiently. 

“They’ve been and changed you, my dear!” said 
the nurse, dolefully. “You’re that headstrong, one 
’ud never dream you was the same. Oh, the address ! ” 
— for Portia was stamping her foot with impatience — 
“it’s Latimer Road somewhere — let me see — I put it 
into my purse. But wherever has my purse got to? 
I thought I had it under my pillow, but you put 
everything out of my head, being so impatient. Stay, 
though ; I remember now — it’s 92 a or b : I can’t 
remember which, but 92 I’ll swear to. I couldn’t 
forget it, ’cause ’twas the number of my cabin on the 
Ismail. But won’t you just give me time to get up 
and go along with you ? I don’t like to trust you out 
o’ my sight any more, my dear ! ” 

“ I’ll send for you if I want you. Don’t keep me 
now, Eliza dear ; and tell them all — Emma and Wil- 
mer, I mean — that I shall be back soon.” 

Precipitate departures seemed to enter now into the 
normal order of events in Portia’s life. The tale told 
by the unfrocked footman would have received no 
credence had it not been for the presence in the hall 
of the valise and saddle-bag, which (failing a gentle- 


282 THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 

man-help) it was nobody’s business to carry upstairs 
at this unseemly hour. The owner of them had de- 
parted, and, judging by the manner of her former 
disappearance, there was no saying when she 
would return. As she left the house,- Portia realised 
that here, too, all was changed, and that the old, 
happy, unthinking existence she had led in it was a 
thing of the past. Even if John should pass out of 
her life forever, things could never be the same 
again. But would he pass out of it ? As far as prac- 
tical results went, her flight to Paris had been little 
better than the famous expedition of the King of Spain 
who went up a hill and then came down again. 
She had run away irresolute, and irresolute she re- 
turned. But meanwhile this, at least, had been 
gained, that John’s sin had found him out. 

It was only seven o’clock still, and Portia had 
many steps to walk before she encountered a cab. 
In Paris at this hour all the world was astir. This was 
Anna’s sweeping morning, and Portia could picture 
her with the towel pinned square over her swarthy 
brow, looking like the last of the Pharaohs, as she 
sternly wielded her broom. The cab stopped at the 
door of a trim-looking house, with a pathway in 
white flagstones leading through the little front 
garden. A bare-armed maid was “ hearthstoning ” 
the flags on her knees. The blinds were up upon 
the first storey, whence Portia concluded, before she 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 283 

descended from the cab, that the worst was not yet 
to be feared. She ran up the steps, overcome by 
the sick, half-sinking sensation that the apprehension 
of bodily suffering to ourselves or to others is wont to 
bring with it. The bare-armed maid had silently 
pushed open the front door (standing ajar) for her to 
enter, and, in answer to the trembling inquiry, “ Mrs. 
Morris ? ” was about to lead her through the short 
entrance-hall, and up the staircase at the farther end, 
when a man’s form was seen descending the stairs. 
Portia shrank back with a gesture of dismay. The 
man was John : he had recognised her, and was 
coming down the stairs to meet her. 

Situations that we picture to ourselves as neces- 
sarily impressive and tragic are often very tame and 
trite in real life. It is the feeling which accompanies 
them, not the words that are uttered, which gives 
them their true significance. That is why the com- 
monplace phrases that Ibsen puts into the mouths of 
his characters, at the moment when they perform their 
most tragic deeds, lend such ghastly reality to his 
dramas. The step from the sublime to the ridiculous 
is stumbled across most easily when our nerves are 
most highly strung. The slippers of Hedda Gabler’s 
husband thrust themselves in some form or another 
upon all our most dramatic experiences. 

Portia shrank back as John came towards her. She 
was totally unprepared for such a meeting. She had 


284 THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 

fancied that her only sensation upon encountering 
her husband again would be one of righteous indigna- 
tion ; but as he came towards her now she was over- 
come by a sense of guiltiness on her own account 
that placed her at a manifest disadvantage. What if 
he were to carry the war into the enemy’s camp — if, 
instead of waiting to be upbraided, he were to begin 
by upbraiding her. He was armed with undeniable 
authority ; he had power, if he chose, to call her to 
account for her desertion of him. In any case, he 
might judge that it would have been her duty to hear 
what he, as well as Mary, had to say before she‘ ran 
away from him. She was touched, in spite of herself, 
to note how his trouble had told upon him physically. 
She could not have believed that he could have 
changed so much within a week. There were traces 
of many a sleepless night, of many a baffled quest, 
of many a heartsick longing written in his face. He 
had turned pale as he saw her (and the effect was 
the more startling that his hue was so rubicund under 
its normal aspect), but his eyes had a sterner expres- 
sion than she had ever seen in them before. In vain 
she raised her head with a half-defiant gesture. De- 
spite her certitude that she had had the best of war- 
rants for running away, she felt and looked liked a 
culprit. 

The unexpectedness of his attitude disconcerted 
her. John in his letters and John in the flesh seemed 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES, 285 

to be no longer one and the same person. Judging 
by his written appeal, which she had not answered, 
she had expected to find him wellnigh crushed to the 
earth under the weight of his remorseful misery. 
Meeting him face to face, he looked more like a severe 
judge than a penitent evil-doer. 4 4 He thinks he has 
me quite in his power now/' Portia said to herself; 
but it was not a favourable moment for proving the 
contrary. The bare-armed maid had retreated to 
her hearthstoning, little dreaming that the lady and 
gentleman who had stared at each other in the hall 
were husband and wife ; but close behind John 
a person was descending the stairs, whom Portia 
divined to be the doctor. In addition to the sedately 
professional air that a medical man puts on almost 
unconsciously with the coat in which he makes his 
morning rounds, there was a solemnity in his demea- 
nour that spoke of a serious case. Portia had made 
a little movement forward as John descended the 
last step of the stairs. Neither she nor her husband 
had extended a welcoming hand to each other. 

* ‘ I have come to see Mary, ” Portia said in strangled 
tones. Never since her childhood had she been so 
conscious of the presence of an aching lump in her 
throat. “She sent for me. Can I go to her now ! ” 

“You had better speak to the doctor/' replied John, 
briefly. His wife did not see the yearning in his 
eyes as she turned away from him. 


286 the PENANCE OF PORTIA /AMES. 

She waylaid the doctor as he passed through the 
hall, and appealed to him in trembling anxiety : 

“Is Mary Willet — Mrs. Morris,” she stammered — 
“is the person who had the accident able to see me? 
Do please tell me. Is she very dangerously hurt ? ” 

“Are you a friend of hers?” the doctor asked 
gently. 

“Yes,” replied Portia, firmly ; “but I know she 
was not expected to live yesterday. Is there any 
hope of saving her now ? ” 

* “I am afraid — none. The wonder is that she 
should be alive still. You know how the accident 
happened, I suppose ? No ? She slipped in the street 
yesterday with her child ; a cart was going by at the 
moment. She managed to save the child, but the 
wheel came into contact with her neck, which was 
fatally injured. It is indeed wonderful that she has 
not succumbed to it already. She is conscious and 
coherent still. Everything that could be done has 
been done for her. I shall be back again myself 
directly — but there is no possibility of saving her.” 

He bowed and left her. Portia turned helplessly 
round, intimating by a gesture to her husband that 
she desired to be taken to Mary's room. John pre- 
ceded her up the staircase without a word, and passed 
uninvited after her into the chamber of death, of 
which the door opening on to a narrow landing was 
only partially closed. The blind was up, and as Por- 


THE PENANCE OF TOR TI A JAMES . 287 

tia entered the room she became aware, like the Phy- 
sician in Andersen's tales, that Death was seated at 
the head of the bed. It was the first time she had 
ever stood in his mighty presence, but her feeling 
was more of awe than of fear. 

Mary's throat was covered with bandages. But 
the haunting Madonna eyes, set in a face of most 
ghastly pallor, looked up from the pillow as Portia 
entered. The dark hair was tumbled and towsled. 
The left arm was lying on the counterpane, and the 
hand, with the mark of dark needle-pricks on the fore- 
finger, clutched tightly at the flannel gown of the sol- 
emn-faced baby, sitting up baby-wise with wagging 
head, by her side. The sight wrung Portia's heart. 
Mary's eyes, shining already with the strange, flicker- 
ing light of a lamp that is nearly spent, were seeking 
hers, and she could read the supreme appeal that was 
written in them. She walked softly to the bedside, 
and, with her husband's eyes directed towards her 
every movement, stooped over the pillow of the 
dying woman and kissed her tenderly on the forehead. 
There was unspeakable longing in Mary’s gaze. 
Her lips moved but no sound issued from them. 
Portia was fain to bend low to catch the almost inau- 
dible words, of which the utterance was every mo- 
ment arrested by a hoarse, unnatural wheeze, like 
that of a child with the croup. But the movement of 
the speaker’s head in the direction of the child, and the 


288 THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 

feeble attempt to draw it closer to her side, made 
clear much that was left unsaid. 

“ My little one, Miss.” The hoarse whisper 
seemed to drive through Portias brain and to pene- 
trate to her very heart. “ Please take him— bring 
him up. ” There was a gasping intensity in the spas- 
modically uttered words that rendered them doubly 
impressive. “ His father— too— ” hoarse wheezing 
choked her utterance. 

Portia knelt by the bedside and encircled the child 
with her arm. “Mary — poor Mary," she said piti- 
fully, and there were tears in her voice, “he shall be 
safe with me — he shall indeed. I promise you — I 
will keep him always, Mary dear — I will tell him 
about you — and — and — is there nothing I can do for 
you now ? I am afraid you are in great pain.” For 
at this moment a spasm of agony, the strain of 
catching at her fast departing breath, was contracting 
the dying woman's face. But Mary's message was 
not all spoken. The final mission of the pictured 
Madonna had still to be accomplished upon earth. 
With the dews of death gathering upon her forehead, 
she turned her gaze towards her rival s husband, to- 
wards the man who had betrayed her, standing silent 
at the foot of the bed, and petitioned him mutely to 
come closer to her. As he approached the bedside, 
she reached out feeble fingers for his hand, and placed 
it upon his child’s head. Before he could withdraw 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 289 

it, she had clutched at, Portia's hand, and now es- 
sayed to unite it with John's in her dying clasp. At 
this moment Portia's fate might be said to tremble in 
the balance. She struggled to free herself, and had 
she obeyed the first strong impulse all her life’s history 
might have been changed. But John's hand had al- 
ready closed around hers, and as she raised her eyes 
in protest to his face she saw something written there 
that forbade her to draw it away. Thinking over the 
scene afterwards, she wondered how it was that she 
had come to capitulate so promptly and so entirely. 
Was it because she deemed that her husband had 
been punished enough? Was her heart melted by 
the evidence of the mental suffering he had endured, 
by the traces of hope-deferred heart-sickness, of 
wounded affection, of yearning tenderness she could 
read in his eyes ? Was it simply that she felt once 
more as she had felt on her wedding morning — 
“ Who shall shut out fate ?" and that she recognised 
the futility of struggling against her destiny ? Or did 
it occur to her that if she had thought (not only at the 
eleventh hour, but when the eleventh hour was past 
that she might still escape her fate by espousing 
Mary's cause, the pretext was unavailing now, since 
it was Mary herself who had forced her to return, and 
Mary's hand, already clammy with death, that was 
riveting her to her husband with a force stronger 
than that of the grave ? Was she impelled to act as 
l 9 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. 


290 

she did by her sense of the sacredness of the charge 
she had undertaken ? Did Mary’s child forge the 
chain that must bind her henceforth to John ? Was it 
that her short insight into Anna’s life had been a dis- 
illusion, and that she was afraid of launching, as Anna 
had done, upon a rudderless existence? Did the 
recollection of Harry’s advice to her to return, given 
with the full knowledge that he ran the risk of losing 
her for ever, influence her decision ? Was she moved 
by the sudden impulse to immolate herself that has 
converted so many women into nuns and nursing 
sisters ? Was she tired out by her night journey and 
her emotion, and unable to form a resolution ? Was it 
apathy, was it pique, was it pity, was it rewakening 
love, or was it a mixture of all these together that 
swayed her ! Whatever might have been the motive 
(and even to herself it was never clear), the fact re- 
mained that she allowed her hand to lie in John’s 
grasp. Mary’s agony was mercifully short, but before 
her eyes rolled upwards in death they were irradiated 
by a light that spoke more eloquently than any words 
of a soul that departed in peace. Her work was 
done, her mission accomplished. Her child would be 
the gainer by her death, and for herself the sleep that 
knows no awakening was a boon. 

Half an hour later Mr. and Mrs. Morrisson walked 
back to breakfast at Kensington arm in arm. 
Wilmer and Emma welcomed them as naturally as 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 2 gi 

though they had just returned from the conventional 
honeymoon trip they had contemplated. Three 
months afterwards, upon an afternoon of November 
fog that had no crimson sunbeams captive this time, 
the whole party stood upon the hurricane deck of a 
huge Orient liner in the docks upon the eve of a 
separation. The bride and bridegroom were leaving 
for Australia. A stout lady, easily recognisable as 
Mrs. James, wearing a huge mantle entirely com- 
posed of the minute and costly furs of the Australian 
duck-billed platypus, was holding two embroidered 
handkerchiefs in readiness — one for wetting, the 
other for waiving. The young married lady of the 
party, clad in a becoming sea-going suit of tweed, 
was dividing her attentions between the stout lady 
with the handkerchiefs, and a solemn-looking infant 
seated upon its nurse's arm. 

“ Don't you think it's too cold for him on deck, 
Emma ? " she said anxiously. “ I'll just show Eliza 
the cabin next to ours that we've taken for him. 
I'll be back again directly." 

She hurried below, followed by the maid with the 
child, but after installing them in the cabin in ques- 
tion was stopped on her way through the splendid 
dining-saloon by a gentleman crossing it from the 
opposite end. The fast-gathering fog, of a dingy 
brown-ochre hue, prevented her from seeing him 
until he was quite close to her. Then she recognised 
Harry Tolhurst 


292 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 


44 I thought I might be allowed just to come and 
wish you god-speed, he said, holding out his hand. 
He had not seen her since the day when he had 
urged her at all costs to return to London. “I know 
what you have done, and I trust you have your 
reward. If I could only hear you say — before I wish 
you good-bye for ever — that you have found it 
already ! ” Tears started into Portias eyes. She 
tried her utmost not to let them fall. 4 'Do you 
remember what you said/' she whispered, 44 about 
climbing the steep and thorny path to Heaven? 
But then, you are sure at least that it does lead to 

Heaven But see ? ” Her voice changed, and its 

tone became placid and conventional. 44 Here is 
my husband. Let me introduce you to Mr. Tol- 
hurst, John . v There was little time for conversation. 
Harry felt that it would not be fitting for him to in- 
trude upon the farewell effusions of the bride and her 
relatives. His last vision of Portia was standing by 
her husband's side close to the bulwarks, bravely 
trying to smile, as the vessel moved from the docks. 
The fog was not so thick but that he could see the 
moisture shining in her eyes at the same instant. It 
was in just such an atmosphere that she had passed 
out of his sight a few months ago, after their joyous 
meeting at the Academy. But the fog had been 
rose-stained then, and there had been hope in his 
heart It was mud-coloured to-day, and the hope 


THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES . 293 

was crushed and dead. If he could have put on the 
Town Councillor’s magic shoes that Hans Andersen 
writes about, if he could have gone back to the day 
when he had sat with Portia under the shadow of the 
stone queen in the Luxembourg Gardens, would he 
have given her the same advice as he had given her 
then ? Would he have upheld the selfsame standard, 
and essayed, as he had also done, to act up to it 
himself? He tried to think that he had answered 
both these questions in the affirmative as he went 
back to his self-imposed career of work and solitude. 


THE END, 



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LOVELL’S INTERNATIONAL SERI ES~ Continued. 


No. Cts. 

104. The Love of a Lady. Annie 

Thomas 50 

105. How Came He Dead? J. 

Fitzgerald Molloy 50 

106. The Vicomte’s Bride. Esme 

Stuart ... 50 

107. A Reverend Gentleman. 

J. Maclartn Cobban.. 50 

108. Notes from the ‘News.’ 

James Payn 50 

109. The Keeper of the Keys. 

F. W. Robinson 50 

110. Tiie Scudamores. F. C. 

Philips and C. J. Wills. ... 50 

111. The Confessions of a . 

Woman. Mabel Collins. . 50 

112. Sowing the Wind. E.Lynn 

Linton 50 

114. Margaret Byng. F. C. 

Philips 50 

115. For One and the World. 

M. Bet ham-Ed wards 50 

110. Princess Sunshine. Mrs. J. 

11. Riddell 50 

117. Sloane Square Scandal. 

Annie Thomas 50 

118. The Night of the 3d Ult. 

H. F. Wood 50 

119. Quite Another Story. 

Jean Ingelow 50 

120. Heart of Gold. L T. Meade 50 

121. The Word and the Will. 

James Pavn 50 

122. Dumps. Mrs. Louisa Parr.. 50 

123. The Black Box Murder. 

By the man who discovered 
tlie murderer 50 

124. The Great Mill St. Mys- 

tery. Adeline Sergeant 50 

125. Between Life and Death. 

Frank Barrett 50 


126. Name and Fame. Adeline 

Sergeant and Ewing Lester 50 

127. Dramas of Life. G. R. Sims. 50 

128. Lover or Friend ? Rosa 

Nouchette Carey . . . : 50 

129. Famous or Infamous. Ber- 


tha Thomas 50 

130. The House of Halliwell. 

Mrs. Henry Wood 50 

131. Ruffino. Ouida 50 

132. Alas ! Rhoda Broughton. . . 50 

133. Basil and Annette. B. L. 

Farjeon 50 

134. The Demoniac. W. Besant 50 

135. Brave Heart and True. 

Florence Marrvat 50 

136. Lady Maude’s Mania. G. 

Manville Fenn 50 

137. Marcia. W. E. Norris.... 50 

138. Wormwood. Marie Corelli. 50 

139. The Honorable Miss. L. 

T. Meade 50 

140. A BitterBirthright. Dora 

Russell 50 

141. A Double Knot. G. M. Fenn 50 

142. A Hidden Foe. G. A. Henty 50 

143. Urith. S. Baring Gould. . . 50 

144. Brooke's Daughter. By 

Adeline Sergeant 50 


No. Cts. 

145. A Mint of Money. George 

Manville Fenn. 50 

146. A Lost Illusion . By Leslie 

Keith 50 

147. Forestalled. By M. Beth- 

am-Edwards 50 

148. The Risen Dead. By Flor- 

ence Marry at 50 

149. The Roll of Honor. By 

Annie Thomas 50 

150. A Baffling Quest. By 

Richard Dowling -50 

151. The Laird o’ Cockpen. By 

“ Rita ’ 50 

152. A Life for a Love. By L. 

T. Meade 50 

153. Mine Own People. By 

Rudyard Kipling 50 

154. Eight Days. By R. E. Forrest 50 

155. The Heart of a Maid. By 

Beatrice Kipling 50 

156. The Heir Presumptive and 

Heir Apparfnt. By Mrs. 
Oliphant 50 

157. In the Heart of the Storm. 

By Maxwell Gray 50 

158. An Old Maid’s Love. By 

Maarten Maartens 50 

159. There Is No Death. By 

Florence Marryat 50 

160. The Soul of Countess 

Adrian. By Mrs. Camp- 
bell-Praed 50 

161. For the Defence. By B. 

L. Farjeon 50 

162. Sunny Stories and Some 

Shady Ones. By J. Payne 50 

163. Eric Brighteyes. H. Rider 

Haggard 50 

164. My First Love and M y Last 

Love. Mrs. J. II. Riddell 50 

165. The World, The Flesh, and 

The Devil. By Miss M. E. 


Braddon 50 

106. He Fell Among Thieves. By 
David Christie Murray and 
Henry Herman 50 

167. Ties— Human and Divine. 

By B. L. Farjeon 50 

168. The Freaks of Lady For- 

tune. By May Crommelin 50 
169 Out of Eden. Dora Russell. 50 

170. A Fatal Past. Dora Russell 50 

171. Miss Wentworth’s Idea. By 

W. F. Norris 50 

172. A Golden Dream. George 

Manville Fenn 50 

173. In Luck’s Way. J. S. Winter 50 

174. Olga’s Crime. F. Barrett.. 50 

175. The Horned Cat. J. Mac- 

Laren Cobban 50 

176. The White Company. A. 

Conan Doyle 50 

177. The Railway Man and IIis 

Children. Mrs Oliphant 50 

178. In Two Moods. Stepniak and 

Wm. Westall 50 

179. The Scapegoat. Hall Caine 50 

180. The Mischief of Monica. 

L. B. Walford 50 



You would play 




HURRAY HILL HOTEL. 



Park Avenue, 40th and 41st Sts 

NEW YORK. 


upon me . Hamlet. Act III. 


Then write for Catalogue at once to 

G. G. BRIGGS & GO., 


HUNTING &> HAMMOND. 

I OC ATED one block from Grand Central Sta- 
L* tion. A Hotel of superior excellence on 
both the American and European plans. It 
occupies the highest grade in New York, and is 
the healthiest of locations. 

FOR TRANSIENT GUESTS, 


5 & 7 Appleton Street, Boston, Mass. 

or agencies: 


Tourists, Travelers, or as a Residence for 
Families, no Healthier or Pleasanter place 
can be found in New York City. 


New York, 

C. H. DITSON & CO., 
867 Broadway. 


Chicago, 

J. 0. TWICHELL, 
223 Wabash Ave. 


Pafrons of the Murray Hill Hotel have 
their Baggage Transferred to and from the 
Grand Central Station Free of Charge. 


lovell bWnOND P^lej 



$85 Strictly High Grade 

■?3 8 . .FOUR STYLES, 1891 MODELS, 


FOR 


LADIES AND GENTS 


Lovell’s BOYS’ and GIRLS’ Safety, 

PRICE, $35. 

BICYCLE CATALOGUE FREE. 


JOHN P. LOVELL ARMS CO. 


MANUFACTURERS, 

147 Washington Street, 

BOSTON, MASS. 


Everybody’s Typewriter. * For Young and Old. 

Price, $15.00 and $2Q.Q0. 


LIVE AGENTS WANTED. 


SEND FOR FULL PARTICULARS. 


Send 6 C . in Stamps for 1 00 Page Illustrated Sporting Goods Catalogue 












































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